01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 19
S E C T I O N
I
HISTORY
OF AMERICAN
CORRECTIONS
Introduction: Not
Much Is New Under
the Corrections Sun
he history of corrections is riddled with the best of intentions and the worst of
abuses. Correctional techniques and facilities (e.g., galley slavery, transportation,
jails and prisons, community corrections) were created, in part, to remove the
riffraff—both poor or criminal—from urban streets or at least to control and shape them.
Prisons and community corrections were also created to avert the use of more violent or
coercive responses to such folk. In this section, the focus is on the reoccurring themes that
run through and define the American experience with corrections.
It is somewhat ironic that one of the best early analyses of American prisons and jails
was completed by two French visitors to our country—Gustave de Beaumont and Alex de
Tocqueville—while our country was in its relative infancy in 1831 and at the virtual
birthing of prisons themselves (Beaumont & Tocqueville, 1833/1964). These two astute
French observers came to American shores to investigate the relatively young democracy
and its newly minted prisons, among many other social phenomena. One hundred
T
19
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
20
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 20
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
seventy-three years later, Norman Johnston (article included here) traces the history of
one of the prisons the French visitors wrote about: the Eastern State Penitentiary. The
irony is that, as outsiders and social critics, Beaumont and Tocqueville could so clearly see
what others (namely, Americans who were thought to have “invented prisons” and who
worked in them) were blind to. Leonard Orland (1995) and Johnston, writing from a
twentieth- and a twenty-first-century perspective respectively rather than a continental
one, have the knowledge that comes from temporal distance, which allows them to see the
context for such a social reform—where correctional practices and institutions, as social
derivatives, came from, and what they represented—throughout the centuries.
Nichole Hahn Rafter (article included here), in a chapter from her classic work on
women’s imprisonment, provides yet another “take” on the nature of incarceration in
some of our historic prisons in New York, Ohio, and Tennessee. Women have always represented only a small fraction of the correctional population in either prisons or jails, and
their experience with incarceration, as shaped by societal expectations of and for them,
can be wholly different from that of men. Some of the themes that run through the practice of corrections apply to the women and girls as well, but with a twist. As literal outsiders to what was the “norm” for inmates of prisons and jails and as a group whose rights
and abilities were socially controlled on the outside more than those of men and boys,
women prisoners and the female experience in corrections history are worth studying.
What is clear from all of these writings is that what was intended when prisons, jails,
and reformatories were conceived and how they actually operated then and more recently
are often two very different things (Rothman, 1980; Welch, 2005). So it was in these early
facilities, and so it is now. As social critics ourselves, we can use these writings on the history of corrections to identify a series of “themes” that will run through this entire book.
Such themes will reinforce the tried, yet true, maxim that “Those who do not know their
history are doomed to repeat it” (Santayana, 1905, p. 284). Too often, we do not know or
understand our history of corrections, and, as a consequence, we are forever repeating it.
In this brief introductory chapter, and as a fitting prelude to the works of the authors,
we will identify some themes that appear in their and others’ writings on correctional
institutions, programs, and practices, themes that are illustrative of where we have been
and where we are likely to go.
y
Themes: Truths That Underlie Correctional Practice
Some themes have been almost eerily constant, vis-à-vis corrections, over decades and
even centuries. Of these, a few are obvious, such as the influence that money or its lack
exerts over virtually all correctional policy decisions. Other themes are less apparent but
no less potent in their effect on correctional operations. For instance, there appears to be
an evolving sense of compassion or humanity that, though not always clear in the short
term or in practice, policy, or statute, has underpinned reform-based decisions about corrections, at least in theory, throughout its history in this country. The creation of the
prison, with a philosophy of penitence (hence penitentiary) along with retribution, was a
grand reform itself, and, as such, it represented, in theory at least, a major improvement
over the brutality of punishment that characterized early English law and practice (Orland,
1995). Some social critics do note, however, that the prison and the expanded use of other
such social institutions also served as “social control” mechanisms to remove punishment
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 21
Section 1 History of American Corrections
from public view while making the state appear more just (Foucault, 1979; Welch, 2005).
Therefore, this is not to argue that such grand reforms in their idealistic form, such as prisons, were not constructed primarily out of the need to control but rather that there were
philanthropic, religious, and other forces aligned that also influenced their creation and
design, if not so much their operation (Hirsch, 1992). Also of note, the social control function becomes most apparent when less powerful populations such as the poor, minorities,
or women are involved, as will be discussed in the following chapters.
Other than the influence of money and a growing sense of compassion or humanity in
correctional operation, the following themes are also apparent in our history: how to use
labor and technology (which are hard to decouple from monetary considerations); a
decided religious influence; the intersection of class, race, and gender in shaping one’s experience in corrections; architecture as it is intermingled with supervision; methods of control; overcrowding; and, finally, the fact that good intentions do not always translate into
effective practice. Though far from exhaustive, this list contains some of the most salient
issues that become apparent streams of influence as one reviews the history of corrections.
Some of the larger philosophical issues, such as conceptions of right and wrong and
whether it is best to engage in retribution or rehabilitation using correctional sanctions (or
both or neither or incapacitation, deterrence, and reintegration), are also obviously associated with correctional change and operation. The authors deal with these broader matters
either directly or indirectly as they underpin many of the identified themes.
Money, Money, Money, Labor, and Technology
When Beaumont and Tocqueville arrived in the United States, the country was literally in its first prison-building boom. We built it, and they came. But what they “came” to,
in terms of prisons and jails, was very different from state to state and locality to locality.
As our French documenters remark, each state, each city and county in each state had, and
still has, its own laws and practices that determine how their local prison or jail is operated.
From the Frenchmen’s perspective, this lack of unity of ideas and implementation was
both an advantage for Americans and a curse. It was an advantage in that it led to the
fermentation of new ideas and the ultimate experimentation with some of them, and a
curse in that it led to a lack of uniformity such that some states and municipalities were
becoming more humane in their correctional practices while, virtually “next door,” other
states and municipalities were engaged in what the visitors termed the “ancient abuses.”
What shaped these differences in part was money, or a lack of it, for such luxuries as
jails or prisons; Rather than punishing offenders with the whip or stocks or even executions, states, large cities, and counties (in the case of jails) were faced with building, maintaining, and staffing correctional institutions with public funds (Orland, 1995; see also
Rafter below). As Beaumont and Tocqueville remarked, such funding, if not supplemented with some sort of income from inmate labor, could be ruinous to the treasury!
The cost of building and operating prisons and jails was, and is, prohibitively expensive (see readings by Johnston and by Rafter below; Irwin & Austin, 1994; Rothman,
1980). Part of this expense, then and now, is for technological wonders, for example, the
plumbing and heating systems built into early facilities and our surveillance equipment
of today. But just raising the capital to build and maintain a facility takes a commitment
of public capital and lots of it. For instance, as indicated in Table 1.1, the Georgia
Department of Corrections (2007) estimates that it costs $31,675 to build a minimum
21
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
22
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 22
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
security bed and then an additional $14,016 to operate it. Notably, those costs increase if
the bed is in maximum security and decrease substantially if the offender is on probation.
When compared to the prison expenditures of other states, say Washington, the Georgia
costs are cheap. The Washington State Department of Corrections estimates it costs on
average $26,736 per offender per year to institutionalize an inmate or about $7,000 more
than the average for maximum security inmates in Georgia. But then Southern states have
some of the lowest incarceration and supervision costs (though they have the highest
regional incarceration rates) as compared to other regions of the country, with the
Northeast having the highest incarceration and supervision costs (though they have the
lowest regional incarceration rates) (JFA Institute, 2007). Notably, these costs are averages
for all adults, and, typically, costs are much higher, because of decreased economies of
scale and different needs, for adult women and for juveniles.
In contrast to current costs to incarcerate, correctional costs in the past were mitigated by the labor of inmates. Galley slavery, transportation, and the earliest jails and prisons (the Auburn, New York model) all used labor as an intrinsic part of the punishment.
Those who labored at the oars, though they might die there from abuse and lack of clean
food or water, provided the labor necessary for the ship’s power before the technology of
sails rendered such work unnecessary (Orland, 1995; Welch, 2004). Transportation to the
new colonies, a practice in use for over 400 years, also had the double benefit of removing the “criminal class” from English or French streets and providing the essential laborers needed for settlements (Feeley, 1991; Orland, 1995). Early bridewells and workhouses
and prison-like structures (e.g., the Newgate Connecticut prison that was a copper mine)
also confined the poor, the criminal, and the displaced (from the rural to urban areas of
Europe and the colonies) in places where, if needed, their labor might be exploited
(Phelps, 1996).
Moreover, as labor was formally restricted in some early prisons, maintenance could
not be done “officially” by inmates (e.g., in the early Pennsylvania prisons). This was
Table 1.1
Costs of Corrections in Georgia (2006)
Capital Outlay ($ per unit or prisoner)
Initial cost
Minimum security bed
$31,675
Medium security bed
$60,700
Maximum security bed
$109,400
Operating costs
Maximum security bed
$18,582
Medium and minimum security beds
$14,016
Prerelease, parole, and probation work and treatment centers
$12,000–21,582
Regular probation
$475
Intensive probation
$1,241
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 23
Section 1 History of American Corrections
another costly aspect of the prison. Also, the labor that could be produced in the individual cells of the Pennsylvania prisons did not compare to the output of the factory-like prisons (e.g., New York’s Auburn and Sing Sing prisons) that other states were developing in
the 19th century (Rothman, 1980). It is for these reasons that the Pennsylvania system was
not much copied inside the United States, and, when it was reproduced in other countries,
individual cells were unlikely to include their own exercise yards. It is also, perhaps, that
jails and prisons have almost always used inmate labor to supplement staff and sometimes
in lieu of staff (Marquart & Roebuck, 1985). However, it is worth noting that the labor of
women in our early prisons, as documented by Rafter, was even more restricted than men’s
because of sex role expectations but also because women were more likely to be left unsupervised and secluded so that they could not perform labor with the male inmates.
One of the reasons that the Auburn and Sing Sing model of prisons spread was the congregate labor systems these prisons employed. Not only did prison administrators appreciate the remedial effects of labor, as did the Pennsylvania Prison Society, but they noted that
it reduced expenses for the prisons. Maintenance of the prison could be done by inmates,
and congregate work, albeit in silence, as prisoners were not allowed to communicate with
one another in Auburn and Sing Sing, allowed the inmates to produce more goods for sale.
Of course, the factory prisons of the North in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the convict lease system of the South during that same period survived because the cost of incarceration could be offset almost entirely by inmate labor (Pollock, 2004; Seiter, 2002). In the
factory prisons, inmates labored together to produce goods, sometimes for the state and at
other times for private contractors. Under the convict contract or lease system, inmates’
labor was sold by the prison to farmers or other contractors. As the supply of prisoners,
mostly in the form of ex-slaves, was plentiful during the post–Civil War period, their lives
were treated cheaply, and they were often not fed or clothed or sheltered adequately.
Another related example of the importance of money and labor in shaping corrections would be the plantation prisons of the post–Civil War period, which acted as
proxies for slavery by keeping poor ex-slaves essentially enslaved (Oshinsky, 1996). It
is not surprising, then, that we see the same thing today with offenders sentenced to
probation or work releases, who
must refund monies to the state
from their wages from outside
work to pay for their housing and
supervision (Georgia Department
of Corrections, 2007). Although
one cannot help but notice that a
stay in a work release or in most
prisons or jails these days is, by all
accounts, much less physically trying than it once was, the scale of
our current use of corrections
(expanding caseloads and populations) is very troublesome (JFA
Institute, 2007).
In sum, despite guards’ use of ▲ Photo 1.1 Prison cells in Alcatraz, San Francisco, California.
the lash to maintain control,
23
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
24
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 24
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Beaumont and Tocqueville found early American prisons to be vast improvements over
the jails that preceded them. As Kerle (2003) notes in his book on jails, colonial jails
charged inmates fees for all life’s necessities while incarcerating inmates without regard to
gender, age, or type of crime. So the early prisons may have represented some improvement, but perhaps only marginally in some cases, and when those prisons were operated
like the southern lease system, not at all.
A Greater Compassion or Humanity in Correctional Operation
Appearing in some articles in this and other sections of this book is a sense that the
development of jails and then prisons and probation and parole encompassed major
reforms spurred by a need to clean up the corrupted and corruptive influences of corrections and punishment as they then existed. For instance, John Howard, an English exsheriff and an advocate for jail reform from the 1770s to the 1790s, called for the
elimination of the fee systems in jails, whereby inmates paid to be incarcerated; argued for
the provision of decent food and clothing for inmates; and lobbied for the frequent
inspection of jails so that they would provide decent facilities and work to reform their
inmates (Krebs, 1978; Orland, 1995; Radzinowicz, 1978; see also the discussion of
Howard in the introduction to this book). Such a call for reform must be viewed in light
of the efforts by other Enlightenment-influenced leaders and philosophers, such as
William Penn, a Quaker who founded the Pennsylvania colony and worked to eliminate
harsh punishments by substituting imprisonment for whippings and executions
(Johnston). English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1811/1930), and Italian philosopher
Cesare Beccaria (1764/1963), who were the great eighteenth-century advocates of deterrence theory and who also argued for less severe punishment for more minor offenses,
were also very influential (see also the discussion of Bentham and Beccaria in the introduction to this book). In fact, Orland (1995, p. 10) argues that the combination of the
Enlightenment belief in “right reason” (or that some humans are rational and not innately
depraved) and the need to deal with burgeoning urban populations led to the creation of
prisons and the need for more jails.
Prisons, such as the Eastern Pennsylvania Prison, the Western Pennsylvania Prison
that followed it, and Auburn and Sing Sing, were created to “alleviate the miseries” of
offenders. As Conover (2001) comments in his book on Sing Sing, “The Quakers’ goals
were prevention of further harm to society, deterrence, and, by the early nineteenth century, encouragement of prisoners to engage in ‘penitent reflection,’ which could result in
their personal reformation” (p. 173). Eastern, Johnston argues, was explicitly created by
its founders, who were influenced by Enlightenment thinkers and the Quakers, to rehabilitate inmates and, absent that, to at least deter them from further criminality. Although
the goal for Auburn and Sing Sing, where physical punishments were inextricably tied to
operation and control, was decidedly not rehabilitation, those prisons certainly provided
a much safer and more decent incarceration experience than had the houses of correction
that came before them or that existed in other states and municipalities.
Since these early prisons, there have been multiple waves of reform aimed at reducing
the miseries prisoners suffer while incarcerated. Probation, as it was originally practiced by
its founder John Augustus, was just such a philanthropic endeavor (Augustus, 1852/1972).
As Augustus himself recounts, his volunteer work as a probation officer began in 1841,
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 25
Section 1 History of American Corrections
25
when he was 57. He bailed out a drunkard before the Boston courts and then proceeded to
help him. Until his death at 75, Augustus followed this procedure with the other 5,000 or
so men, women, and children whom he subsequently bailed out and saved from jail or
prison time. But Augustus’s work did not extend just to bailing out offenders; he would literally take these mostly minor offenders and help them find employment, housing, and aid
for their families. He was known to house several probationers in his own home with his
family over the years when he could not find alternate housing.
As the Harvard professor Sheldon Glueck wrote in his introduction to the 1939
(xxiii) reprinted version of A Report of the Labors of John Augustus, for the Last Ten Years,
In Aid of the Unfortunate, “These rehabilitative efforts by John Augustus were inspired not
only by a strong humanitarian impulse but by a definite view that ‘the object of the law is
to reform criminals, and to prevent crime and not to punish maliciously, or from a spirit
of revenge’” (p. 23). In other words, Augustus and reformers like him were compelled to
act and to change the criminal justice system out of an impulse to improve it and the lot
of those less fortunate.
Efforts to reform the conditions of women in male prisons or the women’s sections
of early male prisons also appear to have been inspired by some reformers with humane
impulses. For instance, the “ladies” that Rafter mentions who visited women incarcerated
at the Eastern Pennsylvania Prison, and the countless other men and women who decried
the conditions for men and women in America’s early prisons (Dorothea Dix is mentioned often by Rafter, for instance) would appear to have been compelled to do good by
a genuine desire to reform not just the institutions but the people they held.
The first major prison reform occurred approximately 50 years after the first New York
and Pennsylvania prisons were built and was doubtless the result of all of those calls for
change: The 1870 American Prison Congress was held in Cincinnati, Ohio with the express
purpose of trying to recapture some of
the idealism promised with the creation
of prisons (Rothman, 1980). Despite
their promises of reform and attempts at
preventing “contamination,” the early
prisons had become, by the 1860s, warehouses without hope or resources. All of
the themes mentioned in this section,
save the desire for reform and that was
remedied with the next round of reforms
to follow the Congress, applied to the
operation of the 19th century prisons:
they were overcrowded, under funded,
brutal facilities where people would
spend time doing little that was productive or likely to prepare them to reintegrate into the larger community.
Appropriately enough, then, the
Declaration of Principles that emanated
from the American Prison Congress was
▲ Photo 1.2 Prison cells at Elmira Reformatory. Photographed in 1955.
nothing short of revolutionary at the
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
26
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 26
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
time and provided a blueprint for the prisons we see today (Rothman, 1980). Some of
those principles were concerned with the grand purposes of prisons—to achieve
reform—while others were related to their daily operations, for example, training of
staff, eliminating contract labor, and the treatment of the insane (American Correctional
Association, 1983). As a result of these principles, a spirit of reform in corrections was
again energized, and the Elmira Reformatory was founded in 1876 (Rothman, 1980). The
reformatory would encompass all of the rehabilitation focus and graduated reward system
(termed the marks system, as in you behave and you earn marks that entitle you to privileges) promoted by reformers, along with trained staff and uncrowded facilities.
Unfortunately, and as before, this attempt at reform was thwarted when the funding was
not forthcoming and the inmates did not conform as expected. The staff soon resorted to
violence to keep control. It should not be forgotten, however, that, even on its worst day,
the Elmira prison was likely no worse than the old Auburn and Sing Sing prisons and probably much more humane.
Similar sorts of reforms followed with the creation of probation and parole in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The idea here, too, was to reduce
the use of incarceration and to help the offender to transition more smoothly back into
the community. Doubtless, the intent was good, and, although the execution of this
reform was less than satisfactory, it did represent an improvement over the correctional
practices that preceded it (Rothman, 1980).
The Intersection of Class, Race, and Gender
Some of the earliest descriptions of criminal law and depictions of correctional practice make clear that who one was demographically (class, race or ethnicity, gender) determined to a large extent how one was handled (Orland, 1995; Oshinsky, 1996; Reiman,
1998). Throughout history, in the earliest of legal codes (e.g., the Code of Hammurabi or
the Justinian Code), in the English “Black Laws” (punishing with death the killing of deer
in the king’s forest or even the “blacking” of one’s face with mud or charcoal to go into
that forest), and in the differential treatment of those who enter the criminal justice system today, if one is rich, of the powerful race or ethnicity, and male, one is treated substantially differently than one would be if these were not accurate descriptors (Orland,
1995; Oshinsky,1996; Reiman, 1998; Thompson, 1975).
The well-to-do were less subjected to physical punishments in the Middle Ages and
more likely to “pay” for their crimes literally, if at all. However, the poor were subjected to
all manner of abuse and violent punishments meted out by the Crown and its functionaries (Orland, 1995). When incarcerated in English and Irish jails of the 1700s and
1800s, those who could pay were housed in comfortable quarters with plenty to eat and
were even able to visit with friends and relatives (Kerle, 2003; Stohr & Cooper, 2007). Such
differential treatment by class was so institutionalized that facilities were constructed with
this difference in mind: separate rooms were reserved for the wealthy inmates, and begging windows were built in next to busy thoroughfares for the poor. Simply put, and historically speaking, being rich has meant that either an offender’s punishment was much
lighter, more comfortable, or nonexistent. As Reiman (1998) notes in his book The Rich
Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, such distinctions, though less obvious, continue today
in our focus on “street crimes,” which tend to be largely perpetrated by poor and minority
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 27
Section 1 History of American Corrections
group members, rather than on corporate and white collar crime, which tends to be the
purview of the middle and upper classes and which, he argues, actually results in greater
loss of life and property.
As indicated by Reiman’s (1998) analysis, race and ethnicity have also served to differentiate correctional practice. In the frontier days, murder was approved practice
against those American Indians who allegedly transgressed against white settlers (Blalock
1967; Kitano, 1997; Stannard, 1992). Never mind that the whites had taken their land and
committed offenses against them. Similarly, there were separate laws governing Chinese
immigrants laboring in western mining towns or on the railroads, regarding their right to
citizenship and to own property (Blalock 1967; Kitano, 1997). Mexicans in the American
Southwest were treated more severely by the criminal justice system than the white settlers who followed them and settled on their land (Moore & Pachon 1985; Weyr 1988).
African Americans saddled with the legacy of slavery and the barbaric treatment they suffered as property under its practices had no protection under the law (Dred Scott v.
Sanford, 1856). Even after the Civil War, however, African American men and women
were incarcerated differently than their fellows; in fact, some “prison farms” in the deep
south were nothing more than plantation slavery continued (Oshinsky, 1996). Even outside of the south, male and female minority group inmates would often be separated from
whites and treated in a more discriminatory fashion in terms of assignments, punishments, and programming (Hawkes, 1998; Joseph & Taylor, 2003). Unfortunately, some of
these “traditions” of discrimination still bedevil us.
The most prominent driver of this discrimination exists in the drug war, which has
spurred the greatest incarceration rate increase in jails and prisons in American history,
along with the concomitant rise in probation and parole caseloads (Chesney-Lind, 2001;
Joseph, Henriques, & Richards-Ekeh, 2003; Pollock, 2004; Young & Adams-Fuller, 2006;
Zimring & Hawkins, 1995). Couple these rising incarceration and correctional supervision rates with the use of “three strikes” laws and other forms of mandatory sentences and
you have the resulting “harsh justice”—the increased use of corrections—that sets the
United States apart from the rest of the Western and civilized world. We incarcerate and
use correctional supervision at higher rates than other comparable countries (Ruddell,
2004; Whitman, 2003; see also a related discussion in the introduction to this book).
A related theme is that of differential treatment for incarcerated women and girls in
corrections (see the Rafter article featured in this section). Some of the earliest correctional
institutions (e.g., the bridewells or workhouses) did not always separate the genders or
divide their inmates by age. But some of the earliest criminal statutes did provide punishments for women in particular (e.g., punishing the village “scold” or the ability of a man
to discipline his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb or the burning of witches), punishments that appeared to be aimed at forcing women to conform to a certain reduced role
in social, political, and communal affairs (Anderson, 2006; Pollock, 2002). Much like
African American slaves, women and girls throughout history have been legally defined as
the property of their male relatives, and it was only over a gradual period of reform, which
lasted several hundred years and included much struggle, that they gained the same rights
and liberties in law as men and boys (Stohr, 2000). Of course, the degree to which women,
or less powerful groups such as the poor and minorities, can exercise their rights and liberties in law, and thus over correctional operation, has depended to some extent on that
intersection of class, race, and gender (Joseph & Taylor, 2003).
27
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
28
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 28
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Religious Influence
As becomes clear when one reviews the history of the Walnut Street Jail and the
Western and Eastern Pennsylvania prisons, many U.S. correctional facilities would not
have been created and operated in the manner that they were if not for the influence of
the Quakers (Orland, 1995; see also Beaumont & Tocqueville and Johnston below;). From
the architecture to the supervision to the type of activities allowed, all aspects of these
prisons were, in part, shaped by the need to provide inmates with the opportunity to
reform via contemplation of the Bible and the desire to isolate them from the corrupting
influence of other criminals.
In fact, the history of corrections is replete with instances of correctional institutions
and practices being shaped by religious influences. The Catholic Church constructed and
operated a “prison-like” existence for offenders in monasteries (Welch, 2004). Perhaps the
most ubiquitous programming in prisons or jails from their inception till now, however,
has been the religious outreach provided by pastors and priests and rabbis in the local
community. Today, more than ever, we see such faith-based initiatives promoted for both
the community and corrections (Sipes & Young, 2006).
Architecture as It Is Associated With Supervision
Jeremy Bentham was one of the first to argue cogently that architecture and supervision were complementary. In recommending to the British Parliament in 1843 the creation of his “panopticon” (an architecturally rounded prison with a central guard station
in the middle and a glass ceiling), he touted the ability of the officers to supervise inmates
more efficiently (Foucault, 1979). Although approved by parliament, the panopticon was
never funded, so Bentham was never able to test his marriage of architecture and supervision idea, though others did (e.g., the Stateville prison of Illinois; Jacobs, 1977).
Much like the panopticon, Sing Sing, Auburn, and the Pennsylvania prisons were
architecturally shaped to fit a certain supervision style (see Beaumont & Tocqueville and
Johnston in this section; Orland, 1995). That style was to be removed and indirect in most
cases, with restricted interactions between staff and inmates even in the congregate, but
silent, New York prisons. This “ideal” of restricted contact, however, was corrupted itself
when prisons confronted the reality of overcrowding.
More recently, in the last 25 years, we have seen this important connection between
architecture and supervision represented in the architecture of “New Generation” jails
(Zupan, 1991). In such facilities, the podular, or rounded, architecture allows officers in
the living units a greater opportunity to supervise visually and physically —or directly—
what is occurring. Notably, the podular architecture, coupled with direct supervision, has
spread to numerous jails and prisons across the country (see Section VIII for a fuller discussion of such jails).
Overcrowding
Today, given what we know about the tendency of prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities to be overused, or at least well used, we are probably not surprised to learn
that the prisons of the early 1800s, like the jails built before them and since, were prone
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 29
Section 1 History of American Corrections
to overcrowding. Almost from the very beginning, the Walnut Street Jail was overcrowded, even after it was remodeled as, arguably, the first prison, and this overcrowding
spurred the building of the Western and then the Eastern Pennsylvania prisons. Likewise,
once the Auburn prison became crowded, the building of Sing Sing was virtually preordained. So we see today the apparently insatiable need for prison and jail space leading to
the current incarceration of over two million in those institutions, with no serious abatement
in prison and jail growth in the foreseeable future (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997,
2006b; see also Rafter below).
But what is often not noted by correctional commentators, probably because of the
lesser strictures on liberty for offenders and the lesser relative cost for the state, is that
the explosive growth in jail and prison populations has been exceeded by the growth of
community corrections populations, particularly in the area of probation. For instance,
from 1990 to 2005 there was an average increase of 53.5% in probation populations
(along with a 9.1% increase in parole populations) as compared to 25.2% and 12.3%
increases in populations, consecutively, for prisons and jails (Glaze & Bonczar, 2006; see
also a discussion of probation and parole in other sections of this book). What these
increases signify is that caseloads and not just correctional institutions get “overcrowded,” and this overcrowding complicates the ability of correctional personnel to
“manage” offenders. These recent data and what we know about bridewells, poorhouses,
jails, and early prisons all indicate that, if an institution is built, it will be filled and usually beyond capacity—necessitating in some policy makers minds the need to build still
more institutions.
Good Intentions Do Not Always Translate Into Effective Practice
It has become an accepted truism of public policy making that what you plan for may
not be what you get once programs are in place (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1984; Rothman,
1980). In his classic work Conscience and Convenience, Rothman (1980) describes the
many reasons a disjunction often occurs between even the best of intentions and how
programs, and in this case, institutions, actually “work.” Some of those reasons have to do
with the other themes mentioned here, particularly money or the lack of it. Other reasons
have to do with the politics of the time and whether a particular correctional practice or
institution fits the culture it emanates from, which in turn is influenced by religious forces
and perceptions of morality.
Maconochie, a progressive prison warden who was charged with operating the brutal Norfolk Island penal colony from 1840 to 1844, instituted some of the earliest prison
reforms, including the mark system (a program akin to good time), a form of indeterminate sentencing (whereby inmates could reduce the severity of their sentences by behaving appropriately), and decent, nonviolent responses to most inmates’ misbehavior
(Morris, 2002; Orland, 1995). But because his proposals for change were a poor fit with
the politics and perceptions of morality of his time, Maconochie was removed from his
post as warden, and his reform efforts were abandoned for a time until prison reform
became politically popular some 30 years later.
Beaumont and Tocqueville note, as does Johnston, the good intentions that served as
the conceptual rampart for the construction of America’s early prisons. Then they explain
29
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
30
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 30
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
why those intentions were never fully matched by actual practice. Similarly, Rothman
(1980) finds in his review of major criminal justice reforms of the latter part of the 19th
and first half of the 20th centuries—the Elmira prison of 1870, the creation and operation of the juvenile court and probation and parole, and reform efforts in prisons—that
many missteps can occur between the “intent” of a program and its actual operation.
Thirty some years ago—in 1974—Martinson claimed that almost nothing works in
correctional rehabilitation, and, though this assessment is generally thought to be an
exaggeration, he had hit on an essential truth: some programs clearly were not “working”
or, if they were, they were not being evaluated correctly so that anyone could tell (Cullen
& Gilbert, 1982; Martinson, 1974; Palmer, 1983). In the last five to ten years, belief in rehabilitation programming has returned, though some rightly note that we never abandoned
it as a central purpose of corrections (e.g., see Cullen & Gilbert, 1982). The lesson we can
take away from these earlier attempts at reform and apply to today’s efforts—some of
which you will read about in this book—is not that we should never try to improve corrections or its operation but that each such effort should be approached with a healthy
degree of caution and grounded in empirically derived findings, rather than in the political or populist fads of the moment (Rothman, 1980).
y
Summary: Knowing Where We Have Been
Helps Us Determine Where We Should Go
◆
◆
◆
Correctional institutions, whether jails or prisons or, more recently, community
corrections, have been shaped by several themes throughout their history. These
themes, though apparently constant, are products of their times. For instance,
the Eastern Penitentiary would not be built today as a general use prison because
it would be considered cruel to isolate inmates from other human contact. Yet
this kind of isolation, sometimes even with the tiny cells, is seen as beneficial by
those today who build and operate super-max prisons for special uses to control
incorrigible inmates (Kluger, 2007).
Whether there is an overall movement toward greater compassion and humanity
in corrections is debatable. Certainly, the current willingness to use correctional
punishment and very long sentences for some offenses would appear to contradict this idea. However, the whole move toward a greater use of treatment (beginning in the late 1990s and continuing today), though certainly motivated by a
need to reduce the warehousing costs of “get tough” policies of the 1980s, 1990s,
and today, is certainly also supported by old-time “Enlightenment” beliefs in
“right reason” and in the basic humanity and dignity of most offenders. (See
other sections of this book for a fuller discussion of the trend toward treatment.)
Class, race, and gender are ostensibly not as prominent in law and practice
today as they were previously, at least in relation to determining how corrections operates. Yet some would argue that the failure to focus criminal justice
energies on corporate crimes and an overenthusiasm for prosecuting low-level
drug offenders has the predictable effect of differential punishment in corrections by class and race, if not by gender.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 31
Section 1 History of American Corrections
◆
◆
◆
Likewise, religious programming, at least in large institutions, is much more
diverse in content than it was when prisons and jails were first conceived. But its
basic thrust is still reform or repentance through contact with and assistance by a
higher power. Moreover, the current focus on faith-based initiatives ensures that
a religious influence in corrections will remain prominent.
Good intentions sometimes lead to outstanding practice; at other times, they do
not. Programming today is doubtless created with the best of intentions, and,
when analyzed, it sometimes lives up to its promise.
In the following chapters, we will see themes such as those mentioned here dealt
with again and again by the authors. That they reappear and reappear and then
reappear again does not mean, however, that we cannot make and have not made
any progress in corrections. There is no question that, on the whole, the vast
majority of jails and prisons in this country today are much better than those that
served us for most of the last 170 years. However, the unprecedented use of correctional sanctions in our country could be regarded by some as overly harsh and
thus a regressive trend. These themes presented here merely represent conundrums (e.g., how much money or compassion or religious influence, is the “right”
amount), and, as such, we are constantly called upon to address them.
KEY TERMS
Congregate but silent labor systems
Plantation prisons
Convict lease system
Prison with a philosophy of penitence
Factory prisons
Silent and penitent systems
INTERNET SITES
American Correctional Association: www.aca.org
American Jail Association: www.aja.org
American Probation and Parole Association: www.appa-net.org
Bureau of Justice Statistics (information available on all manner of criminal justice topics):
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs
National Criminal Justice Reference Service: www.ncjrs.gov
Office of Justice Research (information available on all manner of criminal justice topics, specifically probation and parole here): www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ppus05.pdf
Pew Charitable Trust (Corrections and Public Safety): http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_category.aspx?id=72
Vera Institute of Justice (information available on a number of corrections and other justice related
topics): www.vera.org
31
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
32
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 32
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
READING
This book chapter excerpt by Gustave de Beaumont (a prosecutor) and Alexis de
Tocqueville (a lawyer) is of great historical interest because these two French aristocrats
came to the United States in 1831 purposely to observe and report upon America’s experiment with the penitentiary system. Beaumont and Tocqueville studied the Cherry Hill
Prison in Philadelphia and the Auburn Prison in New York as well as some others. They
found these prisons somewhat different from older American prisons and European prisons; for example, prisoners were kept in isolation so that they could not corrupt one
another, and prisoners were required to work throughout their sentences. The biggest
innovation was that attempts were made to reform prisoners morally and spiritually
(hence the term “penitentiary”).
An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System
Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville
Though the penitentiary system in the United
States is a new institution, its origin must be
traced back to times already long gone by. The
first idea of a reform in the American prisons,
belongs to a religious sect in Pennsylvania. The
Quakers, who abhor all shedding of blood, had
always protested against the barbarous laws
which the colonies inherited from their mother
country. In 1786, their voice succeeded in finding
due attention, and from this period, punishment
of death, mutilation and the whip were
successively abolished in almost all cases by the
Legislature of Pennsylvania. A less cruel fate
awaited the convicts from this period. The
punishment of imprisonment was substituted
for corporal punishment, and the law authorized
the courts to inflict solitary confinement in a cell
during day and night, upon those guilty of
capital crimes. It was then that the Walnut Street
prison was established in Philadelphia. Here the
convicts were classed according to the nature of
their crimes, and separate cells were constructed
for those whom the courts of justice had
sentenced to absolute isolation. These cells also
served to curb the resistance of individuals,
unwilling to submit to the discipline of the
prison. The solitary prisoners did not work.
This innovation was good but incomplete.
The impossibility of subjecting criminals to a
useful classification, has since been acknowledged, and solitary confinement without labor
has been condemned by experience. It is nevertheless just to say, that the trial of this theory has
not been made long enough to be decisive. The
authority given to the judges of Pennsylvania,
by the law of April 5, 1790, and of March 22, to
send criminals to the prison in Walnut Street,
who formerly would have been sent to the
SOURCE: “An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System,” pages 37–52; originally published in On the Penitentiary System in
the United States and Its Application in France by Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville. © 1964 by Southern Illinois
University Press.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 33
Section 1 An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System
different county jails, soon produced in this
prison such a crowd of convicts, that the difficulty of classification increased in the same
degree as the cells became insufficient.
To say the truth there did not yet exist a
penitentiary system in the United States. If it
be asked why this name was given to the system of imprisonment which had been established, we would answer, that then as well as
now, the abolition of the punishment of death
was confounded in America, with the penitentiary system. People said—instead of killing the
guilty, our laws put them in prison; hence we
have a penitentiary system.
The conclusion was not correct. It is very
true that the punishment of death applied to
the greater part of crimes, is irreconcilable
with a system of imprisonment; but this punishment abolished, the penitentiary system
does not yet necessarily exist; it is further necessary, that the criminal whose life has been
spared, be placed in a prison, whose discipline
renders him better. Because, if the system,
instead of reforming, should only tend to corrupt him still more, this would not be any
longer a penitentiary system, but only a bad
system of imprisonment.
This mistake of the Americans has for a
long time been shared in France. In 1794, the
Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, published an interesting notice on the prison of
Philadelphia: he declared that this city had an
excellent prison system, and all the world
repeated it. However, the Walnut Street prison
could produce none of the effects which are
expected from this system. It had two principal
faults: it corrupted by contamination those who
worked together. It corrupted by indolence, the
individuals who were plunged into solitude.
The true merit of its founders was the abolition of the sanguinary laws of Pennsylvania, and
by introducing a new system of imprisonment,
the direction of public attention to this important point. Unfortunately that which in this
innovation deserved praise, was not immediately
distinguished from that which was untenable.
33
Solitude applied to the criminal, in order
to conduct him to reformation by reflection,
rests upon a philosophical and true conception. But the authors of this theory had not yet
founded its application upon those means
which alone could render it practical and salutary. Yet their mistake was not immediately
perceived, and the success of Walnut Street
prison boasted of in the United States still
more than in Europe, biased public opinion in
favor of its faults, as well as its advantages.
The first state which showed itself zealous
to imitate Pennsylvania, was that of New York,
which in 1797, adopted both new penal laws
and a new prison system.
Solitary confinement without labor, was
admitted here as in Philadelphia, but, as in
Walnut Street, it was reserved for those who
especially were sentenced to undergo it by the
courts of justice, and for those who opposed
the established order of the prison. Solitary
confinement, therefore, was not the ordinary
system of the establishment; it awaited only
those great criminals who, before the reform of
the penal laws, would have been condemned to
death. Those who were guilty of lesser offenses
were put indiscriminately together in the
prison. They, different from the inmates of the
solitary cells, had to work during the day, and
the only disciplinary punishment which their
keeper had a right to inflict, in case of breach
of the order of the prison, was solitary confinement, with bread and water.
The Walnut Street prison was imitated by
others: Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, New
Jersey, Virginia, etc., adopted successively, the
principle of solitary confinement, applied only
to a certain class of criminals in each of these
states. The reform of criminal laws preceded
that of the prisons.
Nowhere was this system of imprisonment
crowned with the hoped-for success. In general it was ruinous to the public treasury; it
never effected the reformation of the prisoners. Every year the legislature of each state
voted considerable funds towards the support
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
34
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 34
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
of the penitentiaries, and the continued return
of the same individuals into the prisons,
proved the inefficiency of the system to which
they were submitted.
Such results seem to prove the insufficiency of the whole system; however instead of
accusing the theory itself, its execution was
attacked. It was believed that the whole evil
resulted from the paucity of cells, and the
crowding of the prisoners; and that the system,
such as it was established, would be fertile in
happy results, if some new buildings were
added to the prisons already existing. New
expenses therefore, and new efforts were made.
Such was the origin of the Auburn prison
[1816]. This prison, which has become so celebrated since, was at first founded upon a plan
essentially erroneous. It limited itself to some
classifications, and each of these cells was destined to receive two convicts: it was of all combinations the most unfortunate; it would have
been better to throw together fifty criminals in
the same room, than to separate them two by
two. This inconvenience was soon felt, and in
1819 the Legislature of the State of New York,
ordered the erection of a new building at
Auburn (the northern wing) in order to increase
the number of solitary cells. However, it must be
observed, that no idea as yet existed of the system which has prevailed since. It was not
intended to subject all the convicts to the system
of cells, but its application was only to be made
to a greater number. At the same time the same
theories produced the same trials in Philadelphia,
where the little success of the Walnut Street
prison would have convinced the inhabitants of
Pennsylvania of its inefficiency, if the latter, like
the citizens of the State of New York, had not
been led to seek in the faults of execution, a
motive for allowing the principle to be correct.
In 1817, the Legislature of Pennsylvania
decreed the erection of the penitentiary at
Pittsburgh, for the western counties, and in
1821, that of the penitentiary of Cherry Hill,
for the city of Philadelphia and the eastern
counties. The principles to be followed in the
construction of these two establishments were,
however, not entirely the same as those on
which the Walnut Street prison had been
erected. In the latter, classification formed the
predominant system, to which solitary confinement was but secondary. In the new prisons the classifications were abandoned, and a
solitary cell was to be prepared for each convict. The criminal was not to leave his cell day
or night, and all labor was denied to him in his
solitude. Thus absolute solitary confinement,
which in Walnut Street was but accidental, was
now to become the foundation of the system
adopted for Pittsburgh and Cherry Hill. The
experiment which was to be made, promised
to be decisive; no expense was spared to construct these new establishments worthy of
their object, and the edifices which were elevated, resembled prisons less than palaces.
In the meantime, before even the laws
which ordered their erection, were executed, the
Auburn prison had been tried in the State of
New York. Lively debates ensued on this occasion, in the legislature, and the public was impatient to know the result of the new trials, which
had just been made. The northern wing having
been nearly finished in 1821, eighty prisoners
were placed there, and a separate cell was given
to each. This trial, from which so happy a result
had been anticipated, was fatal to the greater
part of the convicts. In order to reform them,
they had been submitted to complete isolation;
but this absolute solitude, if nothing interrupts
it, is beyond the strength of man; it destroys the
criminal without intermission and without
pity; it does not reform, it kills.
The unfortunates, on whom this experiment was made, fell into a state of depression,
so manifest, that their keepers were struck with
it; their lives seemed in danger, if they
remained longer in this situation; five of them,
had already succumbed during a single year;
their moral state was not less alarming; one of
them had become insane; another, in a fit of
despair, had embraced the opportunity when
the keeper brought him something, to precipitate himself from his cell, running the almost
certain chance of a mortal fall.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 35
Section 1 An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System
Upon similar effects the system was finally
judged. The Governor of the State of New York
pardoned twenty-six of those in solitary confinement; the others to whom this favor was not
extended, were allowed to leave the cells during
day, and to work in the common workshops of
the prison. From this period, (1823) the system
of unmodified isolation ceased entirely to be
practiced at Auburn. Proofs were soon afforded
that this system, fatal to the health of the criminals, was likewise inefficient in producing their
reform. Of twenty-six convicts, pardoned by the
governor, fourteen returned a short time after
into the prison, in consequence of new offenses.
This experiment, so fatal to those who
were selected to undergo it, was of a nature to
endanger the success of the penitentiary system altogether. After the melancholy effects of
isolation, it was to be feared that the whole
principle would be rejected: it would have been
a natural reaction. The Americans were wiser:
the idea was not given up, that the solitude,
which causes the criminal to reflect, exercises a
beneficial influence; and the problem was, to
find the means by which the evil effect of total
solitude could be avoided without giving up its
advantages. It was believed that this end could
be attained, by leaving the convicts in their
cells during night, and by making them work
during the day, in the common workshops,
obliging them at the same time to observe
absolute silence. Messrs. Allen, Hopkins, and
Tibbits, who, in 1824, were directed by the
Legislature of New York to inspect the Auburn
prison, found this new discipline established in
that prison. They praised it much in their
report, and the Legislature sanctioned this new
system by its formal approbation.
Here an obscurity exists which it has not
been in our power to dissipate. We see the
renowned Auburn system suddenly spring up,
and proceed from the ingenious combination
of two elements, which seem at first glance
incompatible, isolation and reunion. But that
which we do not clearly see, is the creator of
this system, of which nevertheless some one
must necessarily have formed the first idea.
35
Does the State of New York owe it to
Governor Clinton, whose name in the United
States is connected with so many useful and
beneficial enterprises? Does the honor belong
to Mr. Cray, one of the directors of Auburn, to
whom Judge Powers, who himself was at the
head of that establishment, seems to attribute
the merit? Lastly, Mr. Elam Lynds, who has
contributed so much to put the new system
into practice, does the glory also of the invention belong to him? We shall not attempt to
solve this question, interesting to the persons
whom we have mentioned, and the country to
which they belong, but of little importance to
us. In fine, does not experience teach us that
there are innovations, the honor of which
belongs to nobody in particular, because they
are the effects of simultaneous efforts, and of
the progress of time?
The establishment of Auburn has, since its
commencement, obtained extraordinary success. It soon excited public attention in the
highest degree. A remarkable revolution took
place at that time in the opinions of many. The
direction of a prison, formerly confided to
obscure keepers, was now sought for by persons of high standing, and Mr. Elam Lynds,
formerly a captain in the army of the United
States, and Judge Powers, a magistrate of rare
merit, were seen, with honor to themselves,
filling the office of directors of Auburn.
However, the adoption of the system of
cells for all convicts in the state of New York,
rendered the Auburn prison insufficient, as it
contained but 550 cells after all the successive
additions which it had received. The want of a
new prison, therefore, was felt. It was then that
the plan of Sing Sing was resolved upon by the
legislature (1825) and the way in which it was
executed is of a kind that deserves to be
reported.
Mr. Elam Lynds, who had made his trials at
Auburn, of which he was the superintendent,
left this establishment; took one hundred convicts, accustomed to obey, with him, led them to
the place where the projected prison was to be
erected; there, encamped on the bank of the
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
36
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 36
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Hudson, without a place to receive, and without
walls to lock up his dangerous companions; he
sets them to work, making of every one a mason
or a carpenter, and having no other means to
keep them in obedience, than the firmness of
his character and the energy of his will.
During several years, the convicts, whose
number was gradually increased, were at work
in building their own prison, and at present
the penitentiary of Sing Sing contains one
thousand cells, all of which have been built by
their criminal inmates. At the same time
(1825) an establishment of another nature was
reared in the city of New York, but which occupies not a less important place among the
improvements, the history of which we
attempt to trace. We mean the house of refuge,
founded for juvenile offenders.
There exists no establishment, the usefulness of which, experience has warranted in a
higher degree. It is well known that most of
those individuals on whom the criminal law
inflicts punishments, have been unfortunate
before they became guilty. Misfortune is particularly dangerous for those whom it befalls
in a tender age; and it is very rare that an
orphan without inheritance and without
friends, or a child abandoned by its parents,
avoids the snares laid for his inexperience, and
does not pass within a short time from misery
to crime. Affected by the fate of juvenile delinquents, several charitable individuals of the
city of New York conceived the plan of a house
of refuge, destined to serve as an asylum, and
to procure for them an education and the
means of existence, which fortune had refused.
Thirty thousand dollars were the produce of a
first subscription. Thus by the sole power of a
charitable association, an establishment eminently useful, was founded, which, perhaps, is
still more important than the penitentiaries,
because the latter punish crime, while the
house of refuge tends to prevent it.
The experiment made at Auburn in the
state of New York (the fatal effects of isolation
without labor) did not prevent Pennsylvania
from continuing the trial of solitary confinement,
and in the year 1827, the penitentiary of
Pittsburgh began to receive prisoners. Each one
was shut up, day and night, in a cell, in which no
labor was allowed to him. This solitude, which
in principle was to be absolute, was not such in
fact. The construction of this penitentiary is so
defective, that it is very easy to hear in one cell
what is going on in another; so that each prisoner found in the communication with his
neighbor a daily recreation, i.e., an opportunity
of inevitable corruption. As these criminals did
not work, we may say that their sole occupation
consisted in mutual corruption. This prison,
therefore, was worse than even that of Walnut
Street, because, owing to the communication
with each other, the prisoners at Pittsburgh
were as little occupied with their reformation, as
those at Walnut Street. And while the latter
indemnified society in a degree by the produce
of their labor, the others spent their whole time
in idleness, injurious to themselves, and burdensome to the public treasury.
The bad success of this establishment
proved nothing against the system which had
called it into existence, because defects in the
construction of the prison, rendered the execution of the system impossible. Nevertheless,
the advocates of the theories on which it was
founded, began to grow cool. This impression
became still more general in Pennsylvania,
when the melancholy effects caused by solitude without labor in the Auburn prison,
became known, as well as the happy success of
the new discipline, founded on isolation by
night, with common labor during the day.
Warned by such striking results,
Pennsylvania was fearful she had pursued a
dangerous course. She felt the necessity of submitting to a new investigation the question of
solitary imprisonment without labor, practiced at Pittsburgh and introduced into the
penitentiary of Cherry Hill, the construction
of which was already much advanced.
The legislature of this state, therefore,
appointed a committee in order to examine
which was the better system of imprisonment. Messrs. Charles Shaler, Edward King, and
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 37
Section 1 An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System
T. I. Wharton, commissioners charged with this
mission, have exhibited, in a very remarkable
report, the different systems then in practice
(December 20, 1827), and they conclude the
discussion by recommending the new Auburn
discipline, which they pronounce the best. The
authority of this inquiry had a powerful effect
on public opinion. It however met with powerful opposition: Roberts Vaux, in Pennsylvania
and Edward Livingston, in Louisiana, continued
to support the system of complete solitude for
criminals. The latter, whose writings are imbued
with so elevated a philosophy, had prepared a
criminal code, and a code of Prison Discipline
for Louisiana, his native state. His profound
theories, little understood by those for whom
they were destined, had more success in
Pennsylvania, for which they had not been
intended. In this superior work, Mr. Livingston
admitted, for most cases, the principle of labor
of the convicts. Altogether, he showed himself
less the advocate of the Pittsburgh prison, than
the adversary of the Auburn system. He
acknowledged the good discipline of the latter,
but powerfully opposed himself to corporal
punishment used to maintain it. Mr. Livingston,
and those who supported the same doctrines,
had to combat a powerful fact: this was the
uncertainty of their theories, not yet tested, and
the proven success of the system they attacked.
Auburn went on prospering: everywhere its
wonderful effects were praised, and they were
found traced each year with great spirit, in a
work justly celebrated in America, and which
has essentially co-operated to bring public
opinion in the United States, on the penitentiary system, to that point where it now is. We
mean the annual publications of the Prison
Discipline Society at Boston. These annual
reports—the work of Mr. Louis Dwight, give a
decided preference to the Auburn system.
All the states of the Union were attentive
witnesses of the controversy respecting the two
systems. In this fortunate country, which has
neither troublesome neighbors, who disturb it
from without, nor internal dissensions which
distract it within, nothing more is necessary, in
37
order to excite public attention in the highest
degree, than an essay on some principle of
social economy. As the existence of society is
not put in jeopardy, the question is not how to
live, but how to improve.
Pennsylvania was, perhaps, more than any
other state, interested in the controversy. The
rival of New York, it was natural she should
show herself jealous to retain, in every respect,
the rank to which her advanced civilization
entitles her among the most enlightened states
of the Union. She adopted a system which at
once agreed with the austerity of her manners,
and her philanthropical sensibility. She
rejected solitude without labor, the fatal effects
of which experience had proved everywhere,
and she retained the absolute separation of the
prisoners—a severe punishment, which, in
order to be inflicted, needs not the support of
corporal chastisement.
The penitentiary of Cherry Hill, founded
on these principles, is therefore a combination
of Pittsburgh and Auburn. Isolation during
night and day, has been retained from the
Pittsburgh system: and, into the solitary cell, the
labor of Auburn has been introduced. This revolution in the prison discipline of Pennsylvania,
was immediately followed by a general reform
of her criminal laws. All punishments were
made milder; the severity of solitary imprisonment permitted an abridgment of its duration;
capital punishment was abolished in all cases,
except that of premeditated murder.
While the states of New York and
Pennsylvania made important reforms in their
laws, and each adopted a different system of
imprisonment, the other states of the Union
did not remain inactive, in presence of the
grand spectacle before them.
Since the year 1825, the plan of a new
prison on the Auburn model, has been
adopted by the legislature of Connecticut; and
the penitentiary at Wethersfield has succeeded
the old prison of Newgate. In spite of the
weight which Pennsylvania threw into the balance, in favor of absolute solitude with labor,
the Auburn system, i.e., common labor during
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
38
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 38
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
the day, with isolation during night, continued
to obtain a preference. Massachusetts, Maryland,
Tennessee, Kentucky, Maine, and Vermont,
have gradually adopted the Auburn plan, and
have taken the Auburn prison as a model for
those which they have caused to be erected.
Several states have not stopped here, but
have also founded houses of refuge for juvenile
offenders, as an addition, in some measure, to
the penitentiary system, in imitation of New
York. These latter establishments have been
founded in Boston in 1826, and in Philadelphia
in 1828. There is every indication that Baltimore
also, will soon have its house of refuge.
It is easy to foresee, that the impulse of
reform given by New York and Pennsylvania,
will not remain confined to the states mentioned above. From the happy rivalship which
exists among all the states of the Union, each
state follows the reforms which have been
effected by the others, and shows itself impatient to imitate them. It would be wrong to
judge all the United States by the picture which
we have presented of the improvements
adopted by some of them.
Accustomed as we are to see our central
government attract everything, and propel in
the various provinces all the parts of the
administration in a uniform direction, we
sometimes suppose that the same is the case in
other countries; and comparing the centralization of government at Washington with that at
Paris, the different states of the Union to our
departments, we are tempted to believe that
innovations made in one state, take, of necessity, place in the others. There is, however,
nothing like in the United States.
These states, united by the federal tie into
one family, are in respect to everything which
concerns their common interests, subjected
to one single authority. But besides these general interests, they preserve their entire individual independence, and each of them is
sovereign master to rule itself according to its
own pleasure. We have spoken of nine states
which have adopted a new system of prisons;
there are fifteen more which have as yet made
no change.
In these latter, the ancient system prevails in
its whole force; the crowding of prisoners, confusion of crimes, ages, and sometimes sexes,
mixture of indicted and convicted prisoners,
of criminals and debtors, guilty persons and
witnesses; considerable mortality; frequent
escapes; absence of all discipline, no silence which
leads the criminals to reflection; no labor which
accustoms them to an honest mode of subsistence; insalubrity of the place which destroys
health; ignism of the conversations which corrupt; idleness that depraves; the assemblage, in
one word, of all vices and all immoralities—such
is the picture offered by the prisons which have
not yet entered into the way of reform.
By the side of one state, the penitentiaries of
which might serve as a model, we find another,
whose jails present the example of everything
which ought to be avoided. Thus the State of
New York is without contradiction one of the
most advanced in the path of reform, while New
Jersey, which is separated from it but by a river,
has retained all the vices of the ancient system.
Ohio, which possesses a penal code
remarkable for the mildness and humanity of
its provisions, has barbarous prisons. We have
deeply sighed when at Cincinnati, visiting the
prison. We found half of the imprisoned
charged with irons, and the rest plunged into
an infected dungeon; and are unable to
describe the painful impression which we
experienced, when, examining the prison of
New Orleans, we found men together with
hogs, in the midst of all odors and nuisances.
In locking up the criminals, nobody thinks of
rendering them better, but only of taming their
malice; they are put in chains like ferocious
beasts; and instead of being corrected, they are
rendered brutal.
If it is true that the penitentiary system is
entirely unknown in that part which we mentioned, it is equally true that this system is
incomplete in those states even where it is in
vigor. Thus at New York, at Philadelphia, and
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 39
Section 1 An Historical Outline of the Penitentiary System
Boston, there are new prisons for convicts,
whose punishment exceeds one or two years’
imprisonment; but establishments of a similar
nature do not exist to receive individuals who
are sentenced for a shorter time, or who are
indicted only. In respect to the latter, nothing
has been changed; disorder, confusion, mixture of different ages and moral characters, all
vices of the old system still exist for them: we
have seen in the house of arrest in New York
(Bridewell) more than fifty indicted persons in
one room. These arrested persons are precisely
those for whom well-regulated prisons ought
to have been built. It is easy in fact to conceive,
that he who has not yet been pronounced
guilty, and he who has committed but a crime
or misdemeanor comparatively slight, ought to
be surrounded by much greater protection
than such as are more advanced in crime, and
whose guilt has been acknowledged.
Arrested persons are sometimes innocent
and always supposed to be so. How is it that we
should suffer them to find in the prison a corruption which they did not bring with them? If
they are guilty, why place them first in a house
of arrest, fitted to corrupt them still more,
except to reform them afterwards in a penitentiary, to which they will be sent after their conviction? There is evidently a deficiency in a
prison system which offers anomalies of this
kind. These shocking contradictions proceed
chiefly from the want of unison in the various
parts of government in the United States.
The larger prisons (state prisons) corresponding to our maisons centrales, belong to
the state, which directs them; after these follow
the county jails, directed by the county; and at
last the prisons of the city, superintended by
the city itself.
The various branches of government in
the United States being almost as independent
of each other, as the states themselves, it results
that they hardly ever act uniformly and simultaneously. While one makes a useful reform in
the circle of its powers, the other remains inactive, and attached to ancient abuses.
39
We shall see below, how this independence
of the individual parts, which is injurious to
the uniform action of all their powers, has nevertheless a beneficial influence, by giving to
each a more prompt and energetic progress in
the direction which it follows freely and
uncompelled.
We shall say nothing more of the defective
parts in the prison system in the United States.
If at some future period France shall imitate the
penitentiaries of America, the most important
thing for her will be to know those which may
serve as models. The new establishments then,
will form the only object of our further inquiry.
We have seen, in the preceding remarks,
that few states have as yet changed entirely
their system of imprisonment; the number of
those which have modified their penal laws is
still less. Several among them yet possess part
of the barbarous laws which they have received
from England.
We shall not speak of the Southern states,
where slavery still exists. In every place where
one-half of the community is cruelly
oppressed by the other, we must expect to find
in the law of the oppressor, a weapon always
ready to strike nature which revolts or humanity that complains. Punishment of death and
stripes—these form the whole penal code for
the slaves. But if we throw a glance at those
states even which have abolished slavery, and
which are most advanced in civilization, we
shall see this civilization uniting itself, in some,
with penal laws full of mildness, and in others,
with all the rigor of a code of Draco.
Let us but compare the laws of Pennsylvania
with those of New England, which is, perhaps,
the most enlightened part of the American
Union. In Massachusetts, there are ten different crimes punished by death—among others,
rape and burglary. Maine, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut, count the same number of capital crimes. Among these laws, some contain the
most degrading punishments, such as the pillory; others revolting cruelties, as branding
and mutilation. There are also some which
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
40
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 40
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
order fines equal to confiscations. While we
find the remains of barbarism in some states,
with an old population, there are others,
which, risen since yesterday, have banished
from their laws all cruel punishments not
called for by the interest of society. Thus, Ohio,
which certainly is not as enlightened as New
England, has a penal code much more humane
than those of Massachusetts or Connecticut.
Close by a state where the reform of the
penal laws seems to have arrived at its summit,
we find another, the criminal laws of which are
stamped with all the brutalities of the ancient
system. It is thus that the States of Delaware
and New Jersey, so far behind in the path of
improvement, border on Pennsylvania, which,
in this respect, marches at the head of all others.
We should forget the object of our report
were we to dwell any longer on this point. We
were obliged to present a sketch of the penal
legislation of the United States, because it exercises a necessary influence on the question
before us. In fact it is easy to conceive to what
point the punishments which degrade the
guilty, are incompatible with a penitentiary
system, the object of which is to reform them.
How can we hope to awaken the moral sense of
an individual who carries on his body the
indelible sign of infamy, when the mutilation
of his limbs reminds others incessantly of his
crime, or the sign imprinted on his forehead,
perpetuates its memory?
Must we not ardently wish, that the last
traces of such barbarism should disappear
from all the United States, and particularly
from those which have adopted the penitentiary system, with which they are irreconcilable, and whose existence renders them still
more shocking? Besides, let us not blame these
people for advancing slowly on the path of
innovation. Ought not similar changes to be
the work of time, and of public opinion? There
are in the United States a certain number of
philosophical minds, who, full of theories and
systems, are impatient to put them into practice; and if they had the power themselves to
make the law of the land, they would efface
with one dash, all the old customs, and supplant them by the creations of their genius,
and the decrees of their wisdom. Whether
right or wrong the people do not move so
quickly. They consent to changes, but they
wish to see them progressive and partial. This
prudent and reserved reform, effected by a
whole nation, all of whose customs are practical, is, perhaps, more beneficial than the precipitated trials which would result, had the
enthusiasm of ardent minds and enticing theories free play.
Whatever may be the difficulties yet to be
overcome, we do not hesitate to declare that
the cause of reform and of progress in the
United States, seem to us certain and safe.
Slavery, the shame of a free nation, is expelled
every day from some districts over which it
held its sway; and those persons themselves
who possess most slaves, are convinced that
slavery will not last much longer. Every day
punishments which wound humanity, become
supplanted by milder ones; and in the most
civilized states of the north, where these punishments continue in the written laws, their
application has become so rare that they are to
be considered as fallen into disuse. The
impulse of improvement is given. Those states
which have as yet done nothing, are conscious
of their deficiency; they envy those which have
preceded them in this career, and are impatient
to imitate them.
Finally, it is a fact worth remarking, that
the modification of the penal laws and that
of prison discipline, are two reforms intimately associated with each other, and never
separated in the United States. Our special
task is not to enlarge on the first; the second
alone shall fix our attention. The various
states in which we have found a penitentiary
system, pursue all the same end: the amelioration of the prison discipline. But they
employ different means to arrive at their
object. These different means have formed
the subject of our inquiry.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 41
Section 1 The World’s Most Influential Prison
41
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Discuss the relative benefits and drawbacks of the “Pennsylvania” vs. the “New York” models of early
prisons. What did Beaumont and Tocqueville think of them and why? Which type of prison would you
rather work in, or be incarcerated in, and why?
2. What was it about America that made its approach to prisons different from that of Europe, according
to Beaumont and Tocqueville?
3. In what ways has prison reform changed since the era of Beaumont and Tocqueville?
❖
READING
Norman Johnson’s article traces both the history and worldwide influence of what he calls
“the world’s most influential prison.” This prison system, which completely separated prisoners from each other during their entire sentence and created a unique architecture, was
developed and instituted on a large scale at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in
1829. Although not followed in other U.S. prison systems, the so-called Pennsylvania system
was adopted, along with its architecture, in most of Europe, South America, and large parts
of Asia until early in the 20th century. This article considers the successes and failures of the
system and assesses its place in the history of corrections.
The World’s Most Influential Prison
Success or Failure?
Norman Johnston
In 1822, on the outskirts of Philadelphia,
construction began on the new Eastern State
Penitentiary, which was to be not only one of
the largest and most expensive structures in the
country at the time but also, in both its
architecture and its program, the most
influential prison ever built.
To understand how Philadelphia and
Pennsylvania became the center of prison
reform worldwide, it is necessary to look
briefly at the early development of penal practices in William Penn’s colony. Penn, who himself had been confined in England for his
Quaker beliefs, abolished the severe criminal
SOURCE: Johnston, N. (2004). The world’s most influential prison: Success or failure? The Prison Journal, 84(4 supplemental), 20–
40. Reprinted with permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
42
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 42
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
code, instituted by the Duke of York, that was
in effect in other parts of British North
America. Upon Penn’s death, conservative elements in the colony and in England reintroduced many of the more sanguinary
punishments. As late as 1780, punishments
such as the pillory and hanging were carried
out in public. An account of an execution that
year related how two prisoners “were taken out
amidst a crowd of spectators—they walked
after a cart in which were two coffins and a ladder, etc., each had a rope about his neck and
their arms tied behin [sic] them . . . they were
both hanged in the commons of this city
[Philadelphia] abt. 1 o’clock” (Teeters, 1955,
p. 15). In spite of these practices, liberal
thinkers and reformers never abandoned their
concerns for prisoners and continued to be
influenced by the Enlightenment ideals emanating from Europe, especially those calling for
imprisonment in place of corporal and capital
punishment. The investigations of John
Howard and Elizabeth Fry, as well as the
reforms instituted in a few exemplary prisons
such as the San Michele House of Correction
for juveniles in Rome and the prison in Ghent,
Belgium, were also well known to the
Philadelphia reformers.
Overcrowding and mingling of men,
women, and boys in the Old Stone Jail at Third
and High (Market) streets in Philadelphia
prompted the construction of the Walnut
Street Jail. It was built opposite the State
House, later to be Independence Hall, and
opened in 1776. After the peace of 1783, a
group of prominent citizens led by Benjamin
Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and others organized a movement to reform the harsh penal
code of 1718. Their efforts resulted in the new
law of 1786 that substituted public labor for
the previous severe punishments. But reaction
against the public display of convicts on the
streets of the city and the disgraceful conditions in the Walnut Street Jail led to the formation in 1787 of the Philadelphia Society for
Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, a
name it retained for 100 years. Members of the
society were appalled by what they learned
about the new Walnut Street Jail. Garnish was
common. It was a practice in which inmates,
when entering the prison, were shaken down
by other prisoners for their money, which was
then used to buy rum and other drinks available at inflated prices from the jailer. New prisoners lacking money had to relinquish some of
their own clothing, resulting in some being
nearly naked in the jail. There was no separation of men from women or hardened offenders from others, and the press reported that
some women had themselves arrested and
confined for fictitious debts to consort with
male prisoners. Riotous and disorderly behavior and escapes were common.
As the result of lobbying by the
Pennsylvania Prison Society, the legislature
was urged to use solitary labor to effect reform.
They asked for particulars, and, in December
of 1788, the society prepared an account of
their investigations of conditions at the jail and
recommended solitary confinement at hard
labor. An act of 1790 brought about sweeping
reforms in the prison and authorized a “penitentiary house” to be built in the yard of
Walnut Street Jail to carry out solitary confinement with labor for “hardened and atrocious
offenders.” There is some evidence that few
criminals received such sentences and that this
little cellblock with 16 cells was used primarily
for infractions of prison rules. However,
following 1790, the jail, now a state prison,
became a showplace, with separation of different sorts of prisoners even though the main
building of the prison had only common
sleeping rooms. Workshops were constructed
and provided useful trade instruction, and the
old idleness and abuses seemed to have been
eliminated.
Walnut Street Jail had been built in
response to overcrowding in the old jail. Now
with Walnut Street a state prison and with the
population of Philadelphia increasing rapidly,
it too became intolerably crowded. The Society
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 43
Section 1 The World’s Most Influential Prison
continued to urge the creation of large penitentiaries for the more efficient handling of
prisoners. Partially as the result of their efforts,
money was appropriated for a state penitentiary to be built at Allegheny, now part of
Pittsburgh. The Society continued to remain
convinced that, in spite of the small-scale isolation cellblock at Walnut Street, that prison
would never prove the value of the system of
separate confinement. Only a larger structure
built specifically to separate inmates from one
another would be needed. New York State,
responding to developments in Philadelphia,
had constructed individual cells in a portion of
their new prison at Auburn, but because of
poor architectural design and an insufficient
internal regimen, the first serious use of separate confinement in the United States lasted
only from 1821 to 1823.
Conditions at the Walnut Street Jail worsened, resulting in further efforts to get a penitentiary for Philadelphia and the eastern part of
the state to house felons. Both the Pennsylvania
Prison Society and the Board of Inspectors of
Walnut Street Jail sent memorials to the legislature. Authorizing legislation was finally passed
on March 20, 1821, and the governor
appointed 11 building commissioners. Among
them was Samuel Wood, later to be the first
warden of the prison. All but three of the building commissioners were either members of the
Pennsylvania Prison Society or had served on
the board of inspectors of the Walnut Street
Jail. The commissioners first met on March 20,
1821. A competition for plans produced only
two designs that merited serious consideration:
one by the well-known Philadelphia architect,
William Strickland, the designer of the disastrous first Western Penitentiary,1 and the other
by John Haviland, a relative newcomer to the
United States. The board immediately split into
two factions favoring either the circular plan of
Strickland or Haviland’s radial design, then
common in England where he had trained.
Haviland’s plan was accepted, but Strickland
was appointed supervising architect—which at
43
that time included purchasing building materials, hiring workers, and acting in the capacity of
a general contractor. A few months later, while
Strickland was in Europe, his rival Haviland
was hired to build the prison.
The building commissioners not only oversaw the construction of the new prison but also
were intent upon solving some of the persistent
problems they had observed at Walnut Street
Jail and at other contemporary prisons in the
United States and Europe. These problems
included the obvious influence of bad associations; idleness that led to disorder and violence;
overcrowding that had plagued each prison
built in Philadelphia and in other U.S. cities;
poor supervision by sometimes venal and
untrained personnel; abysmal health conditions
of the inmates; and, of course, the questionable
rehabilitative value of such incarceration. The
reformers had gradually developed the idea that
the key to true reform was complete isolation of
inmates from one another, providing them with
the right mix of solitude for reflection and perhaps reading and some vocational training or
useful work. And, if all of this did not always
work, the dread of the experience of generally
extroverted, sociable criminals being isolated
from contact with their fellow prisoners for
years on end would deter them from further
crimes, whatever their earlier motivations had
been. This meant that a whole new kind of
prison would have to be designed so that the
entire sentence would be served in a cell alone.
The inmates would only be visited occasionally
by a guard to bring work materials, food, or
fresh bedding or clothing. The inmate would
work, sleep, learn, and worship in the solitary
cell and exercise in the personal exercise yard,
which was attached to the cell.
The idea of solitary confinement as an
answer to the evils of congregate imprisonment had been tried earlier in England but had
been abandoned because of inadequate buildings and the lack of a carefully worked out
internal regimen. What had developed extensively in the little county prisons in Ireland and
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
44
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
England—and to very limited extent in
France—was a radial layout of the prison
structure to give the governor (warden) better
control over the movements and activities of
both the inmates and the guards. What evolved
was a series of structures, sometimes with huband-spoke designs and sometimes with halfcircular designs, with a governor’s house in the
center and cell buildings sometimes attached
but often a short distance away from the center. The aim was what was termed inspection
at the time, but there must have been little
opportunity to observe the activities in the
prison through the center building’s windows.
Writers sometimes have left the impression that Eastern State Penitentiary’s architect,
John Haviland, created his radial plan through
sheer innovation and that is was a truly fortuitous invention. But as historians of technology have observed, inventions and innovations
are seldom that simple. An invention usually
consists of a combination of elements already
available to the inventor. This certainly was the
case with Haviland’s building. His original
plan for the prison was remarkably similar to
plans and layouts for mental hospitals being
built or proposed in England during his
apprenticeship there (Johnston, 1994, p. 34).
y
Page 44
Constructing
a Model Prison
From among 23 sites, the building commissioners selected a farm on the northern outskirts of Philadelphia. On what had been a
cherry orchard, the prison, commonly known
as Cherry Hill even abroad, was begun in May
of 1822, and the original seven wings were
completed in 1836, although prisoners were
received in 1829 while construction was still
going on. No one had ever tried to design
quarters for 24-hour single occupancy of large
numbers of inmates. The technology of indoor
plumbing and large-scale central heating was
very rudimentary at the time. Eschewing the
use of a toilet bucket, common in almost every
prison, some into the mid-20th century,
Haviland provided a cell flush toilet years
before they were available in the White House
and central heating before the U.S. Capitol had
it. Showers, apparently the first in the country
(and where the inmates were taken individually about every 2 or 3 weeks), were in place
before those installed shortly thereafter in a
first-class Boston hotel. Although the heating,
ventilation, and plumbing were far from perfect, Eastern State Penitentiary was clearly
using cutting edge technology. Because the
inmate was not to leave his or her cell, it also
had to serve as a workshop. This resulted in
large cells, even by 21st century standards, that
were 8 feet wide and from 12 to 16 feet long,
most with an attached exercise yard. All of
these features did not come cheap. The initial
appropriation of the state legislature barely
covered the cost of constructing the perimeter
wall and an elaborate Gothic front building.
The overall cost per cell of $1,800, compared
with Connecticut’s $150 per cell, caused a
minor scandal.2 But in spite of its critics,
Eastern State Penitentiary became Philadelphia’s
pride and joy, a cause for celebration before it
was even completed. As an attraction for travelers, Cherry Hill was said to rank with
Niagara Falls and the U.S. Capitol.
Keeping inmates absolutely out of contact
with other inmates during their entire sentences was easier to put forth as a correctional
principle than it was to carry out.3 These precautions proved both expensive and difficult.
Prisoners were not to learn each other’s name
or to ever see one another’s face. Entering prisoners were led to their cells with hoods over
their faces. This was also done on any occasion
when they were taken out of their cell to the
dispensary or to the showers. Numbers rather
than names were used during their entire sentence. The separate regimen required that each
prisoner have not only his or her own cell but
also his or her own exercise yard, which was
attached to the cell. Prisoners were let out in
their yards at different times so that no conversations could take place from one yard to the
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 45
Section 1 The World’s Most Influential Prison
next. Because inmates could not leave their
cells to empty slop buckets, as was customary
at other prisons, cell plumbing was necessary.
For the same reason, food had to be delivered
to each cell by guards. Eastern State
Penitentiary also had to restrict the prisoners
to in-cell work such as cigar making, shoemaking, and textile production. As inmates
could not gather in a church for worship, services were conducted at the end of each cellblock. The wooden cell doors were opened so
the inmates could listen to the sermon through
the iron latticework inner door, but a canvas
was strung the length of the corridor so that
inmates could not see one another.
Prisoners in the first years of the penitentiary were inside a bubble which no outside,
uncontrolled influences could penetrate, and
they were not allowed visits from their family
nor were they permitted newspapers. They were
sealed off from the outside world like unwilling
monks. Their human contacts consisted of
infrequent visits from official visitors from the
Pennsylvania Prison Society or from a minister,
a trade instructor, or the guard who brought the
meals and work materials. All of these extreme
measures to insulate inmates from the corrupting influence of fellow prisoners were at the
same time intended to allow the prisoners, in
their solitude, to reflect on the error of their
ways and to be exposed to moral guidance,
appropriate reading, and to regular work habits
through some instruction in a trade.
y
How Separate Was
Separate Confinement?
Serious scandals surfaced 5 years after the
prison opened. A joint state legislative committee held hearings. It became clear that the
separate system, as portrayed to the public and
to the proponents of the rival Auburn system,
was far from the reality of everyday life inside
Cherry Hill. For a variety of reasons, some
inmates were out of their cells, walking around
without masks and unescorted by an officer,
45
talking to one another, having the freedom of
the prison yard. From the beginning, inmates
were sometimes used as helpers for the carpenters and stonemasons constructing the
prison. Inmates performed some maintenance
services such as keeping the stoves in the cellblocks supplied with fuel and, in the case of
female prisoners, working in the kitchen and
the laundry. Although these flagrant deviations from the publicly presented picture of
the Pennsylvania or separate system of prisoner treatment that the investigation revealed
undoubtedly resulted in tightening the rules,
the costs of using hired labor for all the housekeeping and maintenance made it tempting to
continue using inmates as workers. Prisoners
classified as “invalid” continued to be allowed
to work in the gardens maintained in the
spaces between the original seven cellblocks. It
is clear that guard supervision would have
been insufficient to prevent those inmates
from communicating with each other and even
perhaps with prisoners in their exercise yards.
The planners of Eastern State Penitentiary
intended that the inmates, confined to their cells
and released to their exercise yards when their
neighbors were not, would not be able to communicate with each other. Such was not always
the case at Cherry Hill, just as it has not been the
case in other prisons past and present where
such contact has been forbidden. Some inmates
were able to communicate through the sewer
pipes during periods when they were empty, and
some developed rapping codes that were tapped
on the walls or heating pipes.4 Prisoners threw
notes weighted with pebbles over their exercise
yards, making contact with prisoners even two
cells away. The investigation of 1834 and 1835
revealed that an inmate housed in a two-story
cellblock, while out in the exercise yard, could
speak with the occupant of the cell directly
above through the ventilation flue or, standing
on a workbench or stool, could communicate
through the skylight with neighbors. These
skylights were permanently closed in 1852.
But the dirty secret of Pennsylvania’s separate system was that over-capacity inmate
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
46
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
numbers, due to the extremely rapid growth of
Philadelphia, resulted in double celling,
although the state still maintained a public posture of a system based on strict separation. As
early as 1841, the visiting committee from the
Pennsylvania Prison Society reported with disapproval that some cells contained two convicts.
Prior to a major building program in 1876, 795
inmates occupied 585 cells. More than half of
the prisoners in a penitentiary organized
around the principle of separation were sharing
cells. Before the turn of the century, the prison’s
population approached 1,400, with as many as
four inmates occupying one cell.
The Pennsylvania system, fiercely
defended by its local partisans against the rival
Auburn system, never maintained strict seclusion for all of its inmates and, without public
acknowledgment, seriously eroded throughout
the 19th century. The reality within its walls
was finally recognized with a repeal of relevant
legislation in 1913.
y
Page 46
Eastern State
Penitentiary’s Influence
in the United States
The idea of quarantining criminals one from
the other during their imprisonment seemed
at the time a sensible solution to the problems of disorder, bad associations, and other
problems common in the prisons of the late
18th and early 19th centuries. To the
Philadelphia reformers, separate confinement appeared to solve these problems
nicely. But there was a catch; in fact there
were several catches. The system turned out
to be very costly. The physical plant was more
expensive to build. Eastern’s cells, because
they were workrooms, were large, and initially each had an attached exercise yard.
Prison labor, limited to production in individual cells and unavailable for routine
maintenance work around the prison, was
underutilized in a country that had a chronic
shortage of labor in the 19th century.
Some early attempts to institute the
Pennsylvania system in other state’s prisons,
such as New York’s, were soon abandoned.
They too found the system to be expensive not
only to build but also to run. This came at a
time when some states were claiming that their
prisons were self-supporting and even making
a profit because of inmate factory work that
was producing for a civilian market without
restrictions on prison-made goods. Cherry
Hill was forced to confine itself to in-cell production and, in theory, to hire outside labor for
maintenance tasks that, elsewhere, were done
by inmates. As machinery was introduced into
manufacturing consumer goods such as shoes,
Pennsylvania law forbade the use of machines
in prison labor. In the 19th century United
States, with a chronic shortage of laborers, the
underutilization of prisoners’ labor and the
expense of the system doomed its widespread
adoption around the country.
There were also disquieting rumors of
mental illness brought on by the relative isolation inmates experienced in the Philadelphia
prison. In New York and Massachusetts, an
alternative architecture and program, known
as the Auburn system, was developed. Here,
prisoners slept in tiny cells. Those at Auburn
and Sing Sing prisons were 7 feet 6 inches by
3 feet 6 inches and 6 feet 3 and a half inches,
respectively; Kingston Penitentiary in Canada,
designed and built by Auburn’s master builder,
contained sleeping rooms 6 feet 6 inches by
2 feet 6 inches. Sing Sing’s original single cellblock housed 1,000 inmates on five tiers of
cells in what was once described as a human
filing system. Warden Elam Lynds at Auburn, a
former professional soldier, instituted a
machine-like, meticulous routine for the prisoners, designed to regulate every aspect of
their behavior at all times. Iron discipline and
harsh punishments further maintained order.
To avoid the expenses linked to the
Pennsylvania system while still preventing
inmates from communicating, the so-called
silent system was created. Inmates were never
to speak unless spoken to by an officer and
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 47
Section 1 The World’s Most Influential Prison
were marched with military precision to and
from workshops and mess halls. Ultimately,
other U.S. prisons in the 19th and early 20th
centuries followed this Auburn-Sing Sing regimen along with its associated cellblock construction of multitiered inside cells.
y
The United States’
Second Cultural Export
Construction of Cherry Hill had created an
international sensation. Ideas on penal treatment began to influence European reformers
as early as 1796.5 The experiments in penal
treatment pioneered in Pennsylvania and New
York came to the attention again of Europeans
in the 1820s now seriously searching for a system of penal treatment which would be effective. Philadelphia, a small city at that time in a
relatively unpopulated country, came to be
recognized as the world center of prison
reform. In the process of evaluating the competing U.S. systems, government delegations
and notables from all over the world came to
the United States and particularly to
Philadelphia to view Eastern State Penitentiary. Heads of government during this time
often took an active interest in prison reform:
Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, visited
new prisons in England, and King Oscar of
Sweden published a book in 1840, translated
into several languages, discussing noteworthy
prisons, including Philadelphia’s Walnut Street
Jail and the Eastern State Penitentiary, and
even including a radial prison plan. Another
influence on world prison reform was the
International Penal and Penitentiary Congresses (IPPC), held periodically from 1846.
Beginning with the first congress in Germany,
the IPPC favored the Pennsylvania system and
its architecture. As a consequence of these and
other professional meetings and books, the
system of separation that was first tried in a
limited way at the Walnut Street Prison and
later at Eastern State Penitentiary, along with
the latter’s distinctive architecture, was to
47
become the second major cultural export to
the rest of the world.6
The first delegation to visit the yet-unfinished Cherry Hill was headed by Sir William
Crawford, whose report to the British government favored the Pennsylvania system and its
architecture. In one of those strange twists of
history and cultural diffusion, the radial plan
originally developed in British and European
prisons was not widely used for large prisons
in Europe until after it had been transplanted
to the United States by Haviland. Pentonville
prison in London, opened in 1842 and still in
use, became the template for a total rebuilding
of English prisons. All were more or less variations of the Eastern State or Haviland’s
Trenton prison plans and operated with some
form of separate confinement into the 20th
century. Having visited the Philadelphia
prison or its offspring, Pentonville, and constructed so-called model prisons in their capitals, all other countries in Europe followed
England’s early lead. In the case of Belgium,
Spain, and Germany, their entire prison systems were rebuilt, using Eastern State and
Pentonville models of multiple wings radiating from a central rotunda and the separate
system. In countries such as Russia, France,
and Italy, regime changes, wars, and chronic
shortages of funds resulted in limited construction of new prisons in the 19th century.
One of the first effects of Westernization in
Japan was a new concern for prison reform.
British colonial prisons were studied, and officials were sent to the United States and
Europe. The result was the enthusiastic adoption of the use of separate confinement and
the acceptance of the radial prison plan. The
first of over 36 new radial prisons was opened
in 1879 at Miyagi. Such plans continued into
the 1930s. Prison reform came later to China.
By 1918, the entire prison system had been
rebuilt, resulting in about 40 radial prisons,
most of which are still in use.7 In Europe, separate confinement as it had developed in
Philadelphia continued long after its de facto
abandonment at Eastern State Penitentiary.8
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
48
y
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Fall From Grace
As large prison factories became commonplace in U.S. prisons, Eastern State
Penitentiary continued to maintain the public
image of separation of inmates from one
another, ultimately using the term individual
treatment instead of separation, until the fiction of separation was finally ended by law in
1913 and a congregate regimen, already a reality, was publicly recognized. For years, the
Pennsylvania Prison Society and Eastern State
had resisted reforms and developments occurring elsewhere. When the system of separation
was publicly abandoned, the prison gradually
modernized by introducing new programs and
becoming, in contrast to its past, not the center of new and daring efforts to reform but just
another U.S. prison with aging, albeit unique,
buildings. Outmoded and expensive to maintain, it closed as a state penitentiary in January
of 1970, when its last remaining inmates were
moved to Graterford prison, which was built as
Eastern’s replacement and opened over 40
years earlier. In 1988, a task force was formed
to prevent developers from destroying the
prison, and it reopened 11 years ago as a
national historic site.
y
Page 48
Success or Failure?
Granted that Eastern State Penitentiary was an
enormously important milestone in the history of prisons and corrections, but the question must be asked, did it work? The answer of
course depends on what one’s expectations are
for imprisonment: rehabilitation, punishment,
safe containment of lawbreakers, or profit
from prisoners’ labor or at least not be an
undue financial burden on the government.
Concerning earlier prison experiments,
the matter of the effective reform of prisoners
is much harder to resolve without the benefit
of a national fingerprint file, computerized
records, and long-term studies that occasionally are carried out today on recidivism.
Anecdotal success stories always have been
gathered by supporters as proof of a prison’s
effectiveness. Failures were known only if the
former inmate was sentenced in the same state
or returned to the same prison. Comparable
recidivism rates for specific prisons were never
available. What is clear, however, is that the
founders of Eastern State regarded rehabilitation of its inmates to be their primary goal. In
the mid-19th century, this was in dramatic
contrast to the opposing system developed in
New York State by Warden Elam Lynds.
The goal of punishment by imprisonment
would seem to be a given, although in the 20th
century complaints that particular prisons
were not punitive enough surfaced regularly.
As a matter of fact, such complaints had
appeared from time to time in the past when
prisoners were first given free schooling or
recreational facilities or when the exterior of
the prison seemed too costly and attractive.
Eastern State, devoid of the severe physical
punishments of other contemporary prisons
and institutions in the 19th century, but characterized by a high degree of solitude, was
accused of mental rather than physical cruelty,
and there seems little doubt that it was so
experienced by most of its inmates. Other prisons, although they used isolation as one form
of punishment, relied heavily on frequent and
severe physical punishments. Severe physical
punishments, including whipping, survived in
some U.S. prisons and juvenile institutions
even into the second half of the 20th century.
Was Eastern State Penitentiary successful
in containing its inmates and preventing
escapes? Existing evidence makes comparisons
with other prisons impossible, but it appears
that, compared with earlier prisons, the
Philadelphia prison was relatively secure. When
escape attempts were temporarily successful,
carelessness of guards was usually the cause.
On the matter of cost, Eastern State
Penitentiary clearly was a loser. The warden was
responsible for purchases of raw material and
marketing of products produced by inmates in
their cells. Long after products such as shoes
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 49
Section 1 The World’s Most Influential Prison
were machine-made, the prison legally was
required to make them by hand. Maintenance
tasks around the prison, on principle, had to be
carried out by paid staff. These internal operational costs, as well as the initial outlay for the
more elaborate prison structure, meant that the
system was expensive both to build and to
operate at a time when other prisons were
claiming self- support and even a profit.
Although Eastern State Penitentiary may
not have met its founders’ and supporters’ sanguine and idealistic expectations, it should not
be forgotten that the system clearly did remedy
many of the intractable ills of the prisons it displaced and, in fact, those of the prisons which
followed in other states. The system of relative
isolation for all practical purposes eliminated
the disorder, exploitation, and corruption that
were implicit in congregate housing. Riots and
disorders were rare while the separate system
survived. Inmates could no longer exploit other
inmates, and prison officials no longer tolerated shake- downs, alcohol, and mixing of male
and female prisoners. When both the silent system and the separate system were abandoned
in the 20th century, and when a freer mingling
of inmates in prison became common, the old
evils—inmate exploitation of other prisoners,
violence at the hands of both guards and fellow
prisoners, and a return to the full effects of the
criminal subculture or inmate community with
its attendant assimilation of values, attitudes,
and behaviors inimical to adequate adjustment
outside prison—returned.9
The success of several other issues connected with Eastern State’s system of separation
is more ambiguous. One was the matter of the
health of prisoners. Prisons had never been
healthy places. But the reformers were determined that the new prison be a healthy environment with features well beyond those of any
other prison of the time—shower baths and
individual toilets and a water tap in each cell.
When the prison was built, the technology for
providing adequate heating and ventilating of
large buildings was primitive and experimental.
Inmate cells at Eastern were cold and damp in
49
the winter and hot and damp in the summer.
Nevertheless, the inmates most certainly suffered less from the cold and stale air in their
cells than did other prisoners of that period.
Were Cherry Hill inmates physically healthier
than those in earlier prisons? Undoubtedly.
Were they healthier than inmates elsewhere at
the time? As with recidivism rates, the evidence
does not exist to make such a judgment.
One of the persistent claims of opponents
of the Philadelphia prison’s regimen in both
the United States and abroad was that it
adversely affected the mental health of prisoners. It must be remembered that all sorts of
mentally fragile and all but the most dramatically mentally ill passed through the criminal
justice system in the 19th century largely unremarked and undetected. However, the system
of cellular isolation, though not complete,
undoubtedly resulted in some mental breakdowns that would not have occurred in other
prison settings. The elimination of the
Pennsylvania system, of course, was not the end
of isolation in prison. It continues to be used
for prison rule infractions and as a model for
the new supermax prison. It is the reincarnation of Eastern State Penitentiary without its
humanitarian ideals.
What then should be the final judgment
of the bold new social experiment in corrections carried out in Philadelphia beginning in
1829? Cellular isolation had earlier been tried
briefly in several English prisons, but it was
without the carefully laid out details used in
Philadelphia and without an architecture
enabling the system to be carried out.
Haviland’s genius was not in his radial plan
itself, which he merely adapted from many
examples in England, but rather in the care
and lavish attention to details in the cells and
in the use of cutting edge heating and plumbing, all with consequent heavy outlays of
public funds. The system of 24-hour cellular
separation diminished the need for the radial
layout. Ironically, the practical utility of
Haviland’s plan was increased once the
Pennsylvania system was abandoned and
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
50
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 50
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
inmates circulated about the prison.
However, the Eastern State Penitentiary plan
became firmly linked with the Pennsylvania
system in the minds of reformers, and everywhere in the world where that separate system
was tried, radial style prisons were built.
Although the Philadelphia prison was always
mentioned, it was the half-circle array of cellblocks without attached exercise yards of
Haviland’s Trenton State Prison that was
most frequently duplicated abroad and in the
United States. Foreign reformers never mentioned the Trenton prison.
A mid-20th century Harvard psychiatrist
was once characterized by one of his colleagues
as knowing in his research where the big fish
were but not having the right bait (i.e., being
aware of a problem that needs attention but
lacking the techniques to find its solution).10
The Philadelphia reformers knew clearly what
was wrong with prisons. They thought they
had a solution that would be both humane and
effective in bringing about law-abiding behavior, but they observed, perhaps more realistically, that should rehabilitation not take place,
the experience of enforced isolation would be
enough to deter further crime, even without a
change of heart. Although their experiment in
modifying criminal behavior may not have
been particularly successful, they created a system of prison architecture and a coherent philosophy of treatment that influenced prisons
around the world into the early 20th century
and beyond. Although some prisons have
enjoyed greater notoriety or association with
historic events—the Bastille, Newgate,
Alcatraz, and Devil’s Island—no other single
prison has ever come close to wielding such
influence in the field of corrections. But more
than a prototype of architecture and a strategy
for rehabilitation, Eastern State Penitentiary
was a remarkable symbol of the optimism,
energy, and good intentions of that period of
the 19th century during which Philadelphia
and the rest of the country believed that anything was possible in the new republic.
y
Notes
1. Strickland’s prison has the dubious distinction of
being the shortest-lived permanent prison structure ever
built, being razed after less than 7 years of operation.
2. Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de
Tocqueville, in their classic and even-handed description of the competing systems they found in the United
States, On the Penitentiary System in the United States,
characterized Cherry Hill as “truly a palace,” complaining that “each prisoner enjoyed all the comforts of life.”
3. Although official reports did not discuss it,
female prisoners were frequently used in the kitchen
and laundry and probably in other tasks outside their
cells so that the strict regimen of separate confinement
was not usually applied to them.
4. Frederick Wines, a 19th century penologist,
described such codes used in European prisons in the
early 20th century as consisting of a combination of
sharp and dull raps for each letter of the alphabet. He
mentions a Russian fortress prison where cell floors
and walls were covered with felt and where a wire netting, covered with paper, was strung 5 inches from the
wall, all to prevent communication by rapping.
5. An influential Frenchman, François Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, became interested in the
reforms at the Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia.
His book, On the Prisons of Philadelphia, was published in four subsequent editions in French and in
Spanish, bringing the Philadelphia reforms to a larger
European audience.
6. Although U.S. architecture had represented
British and Continental influences, Eastern State
Penitentiary has been characterized as the first U.S. architectural contribution exported to Europe. It must be considered the U.S. building most widely imitated in Europe
and Asia in the 19th century. No other U.S. building form,
until the modern skyscraper, played such a seminal role.
7. In the large cells originally intended for work and
sleeping for one inmate, I have observed arrangements
for sleeping ten on two sleeping platforms in a cell.
8. When, in 1958, I visited the large departmental
prison at Fresnes, outside Paris, the director expressed
to me his concern that prisoners could see each other
from one wing to the next. They were still being fed in
their cells and exercised in individual yards.
9. The concept of prisonization was first put
forward by Donald Clemmer (1940) in his pioneering
study of the inmate social system in the Illinois State
Penitentiary at Menard.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 51
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
10. The researcher was William H. Sheldon, and
his work, attempting to link body build and behavior,
especially with criminality, was prominent but controversial in the mid-20th century. See his Varieties of
Human Physique (1940).
y
References
Beaumont, G., & Tocqueville. A. (1833). On the penitentiary system in the United States (F. Lieber,
Trans.). Philadelphia: Carey, Lee, and Blanchard.
Clemmer, D. (1940). The prison community. Boston:
Christopher.
Johnston, N. (1955). John Haviland (1792–1852).
Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police
Science, 45, 509–519.
51
Johnston, N. (1994), Eastern State Penitentiary:
Crucible of good intentions. Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Johnston, N. (2000). Forms of constraint: A history of
prison architecture. Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press.
Sheldon, W. (1940). Varieties of human physique. New
York: Harper and Row.
Teeters, N. (1955). The cradle of the penitentiary.
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Prison Society.
Teeters, N., & Shearer, J. (1957). The prison at Philadelphia:
Cherry Hill. New York: Columbia University Press.
Vaux, R. (1872). Brief sketch of the origin and history of
the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia. Philadelphia:
McLaughlin Brothers.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why did Pennsylvania become the center of prison reform in the 1800s?
2. What made Eastern State Penitentiary different from other prisons of its era? In what ways did it change
how prisons were designed and operated?
3. What were some of the successes of the Eastern State system? Some failures?
❖
READING
In this book chapter excerpt, Nichole Hahn Rafter examines gender differences in prisons
at various locations in the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries, highlighting the atrocities that the women had to endure and the reforms that took place.
Although women inmates were separated from the men inmates, they were often the sexual targets of male guards and inmates. Rafter notes that female criminals were regarded
as worse than male criminals because criminal behavior was so atypical of their sex. She
notes that the first prison reform involving female offenders was placing matrons in
women’s prisons with the hope that matrons would serves as middle-class models for
female convicts. The overall ideal, as it was for male offenders, was to reform female convicts by inculcating moral values and by educating them. Rafter introduces us to the
Mount Pleasant Female Prison, the first all-female prison in the United States.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
52
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 52
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
“Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
Women in Early and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Prisons
Nicole Hahn Rafter
The early nineteenth century witnessed the
emergence of one of the most dramatic
innovations in the history of punishment: the
penitentiary, a fortress-like institution designed
to subject prisoners to total control. Although
historians argue about why the penitentiary
came into existence at that time, most agree
about the nature of convict life within such
prisons. According to the usual picture,
penitentiaries were designed to isolate inmates
from the moral contamination of other felons;
unlike the very first state prisons, in which
several inmates were held together in one room,
penitentiaries separated convicts into individual
cells. Some held prisoners in perpetual solitary
confinement, while others herded them
together during the day for labor. But in both
“separate” and congregate penitentiaries, speech
and even eye contact were forbidden. In
congregate institutions especially, strict routines
governed every activity. Convicts with shaven
heads and identical striped uniforms rose with
the morning bell, marched in lockstep to their
meals and workshops, and returned in the
evening to their cells. Officials scorned idleness
as corrupting; they scheduled every moment of
their charges’ lives, mainly for the labor that, in
congregate penitentiaries, was expected to be
financially profitable to the institution as well as
morally profitable to the prisoners. “The
doctrines of separation, obedience, and labor,”
writes David Rothman in a typical description,
“became the trinity around which officials
organized the penitentiary.”1
Few historians of the penitentiary have
noted that women as well as men inhabited
these gloomy institutions. Had they investigated the treatment of incarcerated women,
they would have found that in nearly every
respect, it contradicted the usual picture of
penitentiary discipline. Women were punished
in nineteenth-century prisons, but few officials
tried to transform them into obedient citizens
through seclusion and rigorous routines.2
Even after states replaced their original
prisons with penitentiaries, many continued to
hold a number of women en masse in oldfashioned large cells, inside penitentiary walls
but away from the men’s cellblocks. Women
did not receive the supposed benefits of
unbroken silence and individual isolation.
Exempted from the most extreme forms of
regimentation, they encountered other sorts of
deprivation. Descriptions of women’s conditions in Jacksonian prisons emphasize the
intolerable noise and congestion of their quarters. Whereas male prisoners were closely
supervised, women seldom had a matron.
Often idleness rather than hard labor was their
curse. As time went on and women were transferred from large rooms to individual cells,
their treatment became more like that of men.
But in general, female convicts in nineteenthcentury prisons experienced lower levels of
surveillance, discipline, and care than their
male counterparts. Describing the situation
of women in his institution as “inhuman—
barbarous—unworthy of the age,” one penitentiary
SOURCE: Nicole Hahn Rafter. “Chapter 2: Much and Unfortunately Neglected: Women in Early and Mid-Nineteenth Century
Prisons. In Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 1800–1935. © by Nicole Hahn Rafter. Reprinted with permission
of University Press of New England.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 53
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
chaplain concluded that “To be a male convict
in this prison, would be quite tolerable; but to
be a female convict for any protracted term,
would be worse than death.”3
To illustrate these differences between the
sexes, we will look in some detail at the conditions of women incarcerated from the late
eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries in the prisons of New York, Ohio, and
Tennessee—the three states that this study will
use throughout to exemplify penal practices in
the Northeast, Midwest, and South. (Because
the southern prison system developed more
slowly than that of the Northeast and Midwest,
several late nineteenth-century changes are
used to illustrate southern practices; because
the prison system of the West developed later
still, no western representative is included
here.) These examples indicate diversity in
regional styles of incarceration, but they also
show that women imprisoned in the various
regions had much in common. Their conditions of confinement, while outwardly resembling those of men held in the same
institutions, were often inferior.
y
Differential Punishment:
Women in the Prisons
of New York, Ohio,
and Tennessee
New York’s Newgate prison, opened in 1797 in
the Greenwich Village section of New York
City, was the first state institution established
to hold felons only. In it, as in other prisons of
the pre-penitentiary era, there were no marked
differences in the handling of the sexes.
Evenhandedness was not to remain the rule for
long, but in Newgate and other original state
prisons, officials had little alternative. Like
Newgate’s male convicts, women were lodged
in chambers “sufficient for the accommodation of eight persons.” Their quarters were separated, for women resided in a north wing
with “a courtyard entirely distinct from that of
53
the men”; yet the institution’s small size did
not permit women to be isolated from the
mainstream of prison life, as they were later
isolated in penitentiaries. The women had no
matron, but as several lived together in each
room, they could protect one another from
lascivious turnkeys. Thus they were less
exposed to sexual attack than women later
held in individual penitentiary cells. Newgate’s
women were required to wash and sew, while
the males were assigned to shoemaking and
other manufactures. However, because profit
making had not assumed the importance that
it later did in penitentiary management, the
women’s apparently lower productivity did not
yet furnish an excuse for inequitable care.4
Treatment of both male and female felons
changed radically when, about 1820, the penitentiary system was inaugurated at New York’s
new Auburn State Prison. Auburn’s disciplinary
methods—the individual cell, lockstep, prohibition on prisoner communication, harsh
punishments for rule infractions, hard labor—
captured the imagination of penologists
throughout the western world and soon
became staples in penal regimens. With the
advent of penitentiary discipline, New York
closed the outmoded Newgate, transferring
that prison’s male inmates to Auburn. But
women did not receive the benefits thought to
accrue to penitentiary discipline for another
decade. Instead they became pawns in a heated
dispute between Auburn and another New York
state penitentiary that opened somewhat later
at Sing Sing. Neither wanted the women, who
were shunned as a particularly difficult type of
prisoner; each made strenuous efforts to ensure
that females would be sent to the other location. While the men’s prisons engaged in this
squabble, women formerly incarcerated at
Newgate, along with others subsequently committed from the New York City area, were held
at the city’s Bellevue Penitentiary.
At Bellevue, standards sank far below
those established at the state penitentiaries, for
aside from semiannual visits by the inspectors
of Sing Sing (who technically had custody of
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
54
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 54
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
these women), the female prisoners almost
wholly lacked supervision. No matron was
hired to attend to their needs and maintain
order. Visiting state officials lamented the
wretchedness of conditions at Bellevue: the
impossibility of separating old from young,
and hardened criminals from novices; the
women’s “constant and unrestrained intercourse” (a fault of special seriousness at a time
when most penologists endorsed the silent system); the poor quality and quantity of the
food; the lack of a matron; and the absence of
proper sanitary and security precautions (during a cholera epidemic, eight women died and
eleven escaped). But these complaints had little effect on Bellevue’s officials, who also
actively sought to avoid responsibility for the
state’s female convicts.5
While these conditions prevailed for New
York City–area women, courts in the western
part of the state began, in 1825, to commit
females to Auburn. There, however, they were
housed not in cellblocks but in a third-floor
attic above the penitentiary’s kitchen. Like
their Bellevue counterparts, they suffered
extreme neglect. Until a matron was hired in
1832, women at Auburn had no supervision.
Once a day a steward delivered food and
removed the waste, but otherwise prisoners
were left to their own devices. Their lack of
protection from one another, and the psychological strain of being forced to share an overcrowded, unventilated space, sharply
distinguished their care from that of men in
the nearby cellblocks. Visiting in the early
1830s, Harriet Martineau reported a scene of
almost complete chaos:
The arrangements for the women
were extremely bad. . . . The women
were all in one large room, sewing.
The attempt to enforce silence was
soon given up as hopeless; and the
gabble of tongues among the few who
were there was enough to paralyze
any matron. . . . There was an engine
in sight which made me doubt the
evidence of my own eyes; stocks of a
terrible construction; a chair, with a
fastening for the head and for all the
limbs. Any lunatic asylum ought to be
ashamed of such an instrument. The
governor [warden] liked it no better
than we; but he pleaded that it was his
only means of keeping his refractory
female prisoners quiet while he was
allowed only one room to put them
all into.6
Reports such as Martineau’s—together
with the scandal that ensued when one Auburn
inmate became pregnant, was flogged while
five months into her pregnancy, and later
died—finally forced New York to construct
regular quarters for its female felons. This was
the Mount Pleasant Female Prison, to which
Auburn and Bellevue inmates were transferred
in 1839. Nearly two decades had passed since
New York had indicated, at Auburn and Sing
Sing, that individual cells, close supervision,
and reformational discipline were desirable for
prisoners.7
The development of Ohio’s prison system
paralleled that of New York’s. Like Newgate,
Ohio’s first prisons resembled large houses;
they were relatively small buildings, and their
cells opened off central corridors. In 1834,
Ohio abandoned this nonsecure type of structure, substituting a penitentiary patterned
after Auburn. Like Auburn and Bellevue, the
Ohio penitentiary segregated female prisoners
into separate quarters. But in two respects, the
penal practices of Ohio diverged from those of
New York. First, Ohio had much lower standards for handling prisoners of both sexes:
throughout the nineteenth century, observers
ranked the Ohio penitentiary as one of the
worst prisons in the country. Diseases ravaged
the population, administrative corruption
flourished, and, as Dorothea Dix put it in an
indictment scathing even for her, the institution was “so totally deficient of the means of
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 55
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
moral and mental culture . . . that little
remains to be said, after stating the fact.”
Second, Ohio’s prisoner population was
smaller than New York’s, reflecting its smaller
general population. Whereas New York’s relatively large number of female convicts pushed
the state into creating a separate women’s
prison at mid-century, Ohio was able to wait
until the early twentieth century to do so.8
The Ohio penitentiary developed a novel
method of sequestering females, that of building a Women’s Annex adjacent to the institution
but outside its front wall. Constructed in 1837,
the annex was one of the earliest extramural
structures in the country designed specifically
for female state prisoners. Originally the annex
consisted of eleven two-person rooms and a
yard. Crowding later necessitated construction
of additional cells, but because the annex had
been jammed between the perimeter wall and
the street, it could not be expanded, and the
women’s quarters became increasingly
cramped. Like the men’s section, the annex
sometimes fell into such disrepair that it was
impossible to keep out the elements. The wings
of the men’s prison, “which have leaked for
years,” were recovered in 1850 with cement.
“The female prison has been served in the same
way,” according to the annual report, but “Much
more needs to be done by way of improvements.” Similar observations about the miserable state of the annex were made for the next
sixty years.9
As in New York, segregation of women led
to their neglect. The men’s section was patrolled
by guards, but until 1846, the annex had no
matron. Thereafter, owing to underfunding and
political turmoil in the central administration,
supervision remained sporadic and inadequate
at best. As a result, discipline was often more lax
for female than male prisoners. Lack of discipline was accompanied by absence of other
forms of attention and control. Unguarded, the
women were vulnerable to unwelcome sexual
advances by male officials. Pandemonium some times prevailed. Gerrish Barrett, a representative
55
of the Boston Prison Discipline Society who visited the Ohio penitentiary in the mid-1840s,
reported that although there were only nine
women, they gave more trouble than the five
hundred male convicts. “The women fight,
scratch, pull hair, curse, swear and yell, and to
bring them to order a keeper has frequently to
go among them with a horsewhip.” That there
was some accuracy in Barrett’s description is
indicated by Dorothea Dix’s independent
observation of about the same period: “There
was no matron in the woman’s wing at the time
I was there, . . . and they were not slow to exercise their good and evil gifts on each other.”
Later in the century, former prisoner Sarah
Victor wrote, “[T]he knives had all been taken
from the female department, to prevent some
refractory prisoners from cutting each other,
which they had done, in a terrible manner, at
times. . . .”10
Even at the Ohio penitentiary, strict rules
were sometimes imposed on women. Sarah
Victor reported that in the early 1870s the “discipline of the prison was very strict. . . . the
prisoners not being allowed to speak to each
other. . . .” And on occasion, women were punished severely. Victor describes one women
beaten so terribly “that she was black-and-blue
all over her body.” She herself, when she
arrived at the penitentiary about 1870, was
kept in solitary confinement for five months.
In 1880, a new matron alluded with awe to a
brutal penalty used by her predecessor; she
hoped never to resort to it herself. This was
probably the “hummingbird,” a form of punishment that forced the naked offender to sit,
blind-folded, in a tub of water while steam
pipes were made to shriek and electric current
was applied to the body.11
At times, then, women in the annex did
taste the bitterness of penitentiary discipline.
At others, they were practically free of control.
But because leniency often went hand in hand
with anarchy, it was not necessarily preferable
to the austerities of a solitary cell and close
surveillance.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
56
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 56
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Tennessee’s first prison, opened in
Nashville in 1831, also adopted the Auburn system of convict discipline: inmates were brought
together during the day for silent labor (for the
women, mainly sewing), and at night they were
locked in individual cells. For its first ten or fifteen years of operation, the Tennessee State
Penitentiary was a relatively progressive institution. More than Ohio’s prison, it attempted to
approximate New York’s standards of care. By
1845, however, decline had set in. Concern with
maximizing profits from prison labor, combined with increasing preoccupation with the
issue of slavery, corroded the quality of convict
care. Tennessee started exhibiting the indifference to prisoner health and safety that came to
characterize penal treatment throughout the
South. On the eve of the Civil War the institution lacked an adequate water supply, and the
warden was forced to inquire of the legislature,
“What shall be done with the excrement arising
in the prison in the future? You are aware it has
been deposited on a vacant lot adjoining the
prison property for the last fifteen years.” The
Civil War destroyed any possibility that
Tennessee might have returned to northern
standards. As in other Southern states, the conflict severely damaged the prison system, and
prisoners were virtually forgotten. After it was
over, . . . the penitentiary filled with newly
freed blacks and began to replicate the techniques of slavery.12
Few women were held in Tennessee’s penitentiary before the Civil War. The first male
prisoners had arrived in 1831; the first woman,
sentenced to the institution in 1840, had been
preceded by 453 men. In outward respects, they
received care similar to that of men. Apparently
they were not even isolated in a separate section
of the prison. In the early 1840s, Governor
James K. Polk appealed for “suitable apartments” in which to segregate the women, but
his recommendation went unheeded for four
decades. So egalitarian was the penitentiary in
its treatment of the sexes that, after the Civil
War, it sent women to labor alongside men in
coal mines and on railroads.13
But despite surface similarities between the
care of female and male prisoners, women held
at the Tennessee penitentiary in fact experienced disadvantages. Because of their low commitment rate, the institution’s failure to hire a
matron, and its post-war policy of assigning
some women to work-gangs, the women were
nearly (sometimes entirely) alone among the
men, isolated not by a policy of segregation (as
in the North) but by their small numbers and
sex. The issue of privacy was always a problem
for the women. Sexual exploitation through
rape and forced prostitution was constantly
present as a threat, if not an actuality. Thus the
women’s experience of incarceration must have
been one of greater loneliness, vulnerability,
anxiety, and humiliation than that of men at
the Tennessee penitentiary.14
Not until the 1880s did the Nashville institution begin to separate women from the main
population of prisoners. At this point it segregated women in an upper story of the entrance
building, much as Auburn had isolated women
above its kitchen fifty years before. Tennessee’s
slowness in sequestering women was due to
several factors: the minuscule size of its female
population until after the Civil War; the war
itself, which totally disrupted prison management; and the indifference to prisoner care that
formed part of the southern penal tradition. As
in other states, once women were segregated,
aspects of their care deteriorated. They came to
suffer from extreme overcrowding: in 1894,
forty-five women were incarcerated in a wing
of sixteen cells. In their separate female department, women had no employment or other
programs, not even a place to exercise. And
until a matron was hired at the century’s end,
they were almost entirely cut off from prison
personnel. These conditions were not worse
than those of Tennessee’s male prisoners, many
of whom experienced forced labor as well as
desperate crowding. But isolation from the
men meant a change in the sources of misery
for women, just as it had in New York and
Ohio: earlier, women suffered from superficial
egalitarianism; later, from segregation.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 57
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
y
Stages in the
Segregation of Female
Prisoners and Sources
of Unequal Treatment
As these examples indicate, there were phases
in the process by which female prisoners were
separated from the main, male populations.
Patterns differed from state to state, but broadly
speaking, there were three stages in the separation process. During the first, women formed
part of the general prison population; they
were confined in large rooms or individual cells
but not further isolated. During the second,
they were removed to separate quarters within
or attached to the men’s section—to the
kitchen attic at Auburn, the annex at the Ohio
penitentiary, and the upper floor of the
entrance building in Tennessee. In the third
stage, women were relocated to an even more
isolated building on or near the main prison
grounds. New York’s Mount Pleasant Female
Prison illustrates this third stage, as does the
Woman’s Building erected in the northwest
corner of the yard of the new penitentiary
opened by Tennessee in 1898. The evolution of
separate quarters for women tended to be most
rapid in the Northeast, a bit slower in the
Midwest, slower still in the South, and most
laggardly of all in the West. (In the late 1970s, a
few western states still remained in the second
stage, holding their few female felons in small
units adjacent to their prisons for men.15)
After the separation process began, female
prisoners tended, in Francis Lieber’s phrase, to
be “much and unfortunately neglected.” Their
care paralleled that of men in the same institution, but the superficial resemblances concealed important discrepancies. Women were
sometimes treated less severely. However, for
each exemption they paid a corresponding
price. Less discipline meant less supervision,
and hence less protection from one another
and male officers. When they lacked individual
cells, women could not be classified by seriousness of offense or behavior in prison. In
57
congregate cells they had more opportunity for
conversation and companionship than men,
but they suffered from lack of privacy. And in
nearly every state, separation meant less access
to fresh air, exercise yards, and prison staff.16
One source of differential treatment was
the simple fact that so few women were sentenced to state prisons. In the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, women rarely made
up more than 10 percent of a prison’s population, often far less. Visiting in the early 1830s,
William Crawford found only ninety-seven
women in the penitentiaries of the seven most
populous states and the District of Columbia.
Fifteen years later, Dorothea Dix counted a
grand total of 167 females in prisons from
Maine through Virginia.17 Beaumont and
Tocqueville remarked of female inmates,
It is because they occupy little space
in the prison, that they have been
neglected. It is the same with most
evils of society, a remedy for which is
ardently sought if they are important; if they are not alarming they are
overlooked.18
Officials resented the extra demands that a few
female prisoners placed on their resources.
Chaplains and physicians found it bothersome
to visit the female department after making
their usual rounds. And to hire a matron to
supervise a handful of women seemed an
unwarranted expense.
Several nineteenth-century penologists
addressed the question of why male prisoners so
greatly outnumbered female ones. Francis
Lieber found the answer in a lower female rate of
crime. “In all countries women commit less [sic]
crimes than men, but in none is the disproportion of criminals of the two sexes so great as in
ours,”19 This lower crime rate Lieber in turn
attributed mainly to women’s social conditions:
Women commit fewer crimes from
three causes chiefly: (1) because they
are, according to their destiny and the
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
58
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 58
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
consequent place they occupy in civil
society, less exposed to temptation or
to inducement to crime; their ambition is not so much excited, and they
are naturally more satisfied with a
dependant [sic] situation; (2) they
have not the courage or strength necessary to commit a number of the
crimes which largely swell the lists of
male convicts, such as burglary, robbery, and forcible murder; (3) according to their position in society they
cannot easily commit certain crimes,
such as bigamy, forgery, false arrest,
abuse of official power, revolt, etc.20
William Crawford, on the other hand,
suspected that chivalry, together with a need
for female services and lack of cell space for
women, worked to keep their numbers low:
Few circumstances . . . impress a visitor more forcibly than the small number of females to be found in the
penitentiaries of
the United
States. . . . I fear, however, that the
criminal calendars do not convey a
correct idea of the extent of crime
among the female population: at least
I have been assured that from the general sense which exists of the value of
female services, particularly in those
parts of the country which have been
but recently settled, there prevails a
strong indisposition to prosecute,
especially if the offender be not a
woman of colour. Magistrates are also
reluctant to commit women from the
circumstance of there not being any
suitable prisons for their reception.
With the exception of Pennsylvania
and Connecticut, there is not a single
State in which the treatment of female
prisoners is not entirely neglected.21
In all likelihood, both Lieber and
Crawford were partially correct. Today, too, far
fewer women than men are committed to
prison, because of lower rates of offending.
Women are socialized to be more passive and
nurturing than men, and as a result, they
commit less crime. The same was true in the
past. And in the nineteenth century, judges
probably were reluctant to incarcerate women,
especially those who seemed to remain within
the bounds of respectability. As Sing Sing’s
chaplain put it in 1841, courts evidently
refused “to send any female to the State prison
save the vilest of the vile.”22
But it was not only their small numbers
that made female convicts seem insignificant.
To many officials, women were by definition
more troublesome and less able than men. For
example, women—the outsiders—were identified as the source of sexual trouble. The proximity of women was thought to drive men to
the unhealthy practice of masturbation; the
presence of women led to scandals when officers were discovered fostering prostitution or
fathering children. One former inmate, a male,
complained of Newgate’s women that “The
utmost vulgarity, obscenity, and wantonness,
characterizes their language, their habits and
their manners[,] . . . agonizing . . . every fibre
of delicacy and virtue.” Women alone seemed
to be at fault in such matters. Enoch Wines and
Theodore Dwight, national authorities on
prison management, argued for entirely separate prisons for women “on moral grounds,
because where the two sexes are confined in the
same building or the same enclosure, the very
fact of this contiguity has an exciting and bad
effect, and leads to endless attempts to communicate, which are not unfrequently, against all
probability, successful.” Wines and Dwight
found, moreover, that “where prisoners of different sexes are confined in the same building
or enclosure it is often necessary to impede
light and ventilation by half closing windows,
and by putting doors across passages which
would otherwise be left open, thus violating the
laws of hygiene and obstructing an important
condition of health.” Such barriers were usually
placed on the smaller, women’s units. Thus
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 59
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
women bore the burden for separation of the
sexes, just as they often bore the blame for sexual disturbances in the first place.23
Neglect was also a result of female prisoners’ apparent inability to earn their keep.
Administrators had little interest in inmates
who could not turn a profit. “The product of
women’s labor in the State prisons,” Dix
observed, “fails to meet the expenses of their
department.” Of the female department at
Connecticut’s Wethersfield prison, Crawford
reported: “The directors have stated their conviction that no contract can be made for the
profitable employment of this part of the
establishment, after paying the expense of its
support and management.” In an era when
prisoners were expected at least to support
their institution, and sometimes to contribute
significantly to state revenues as well, these
were serious charges against female convicts.
However, those who complained of the financial liability of female departments ignored the
fact that women were simply not assigned to or
contracted for high profit tasks. Provided with
less lucrative work, they were in fact prevented
from earning as much as males.24
Finally, differential treatment of women
stemmed from the common belief that a
female criminal was far worse than any male,
depraved beyond redemption. (This conviction prevailed until the reformatory movement began.) In 1833 Francis Lieber stressed
that “the injury done to society by a criminal
woman, is in most cases much greater than
that suffered from a male criminal,” a phenomenon he attributed to woman’s role as
guardian of society’s morals: beginning from a
higher elevation, woman had further to fall.
“[A] woman once renouncing honesty and
virtue, passes over to the most hideous crimes
which women commit, with greater ease than
a man proceeds from his first offense to the
blackest crimes committed by his sex.” Thus,
Lieber maintained, “a woman, when she commits a crime, acts more in contradiction to her
whole moral organization, i.e., must be more
depraved, must have sunk already deeper than
59
a man.” Similarly, Mary Carpenter, the English
authority on women and crime, wrote that
“female convicts are, as a class, even more
morally degraded than men.” We hear echoes
of this belief in the complete corruption of the
female criminal in Gerrish Barrett’s report that
the nine women in Ohio’s annex gave more
trouble than the penitentiary’s five hundred
males. A similar conviction informed the first
European treatise on female crime, in which
Lombroso explained that the female offender
outdistanced the male in primitive depravity.
At bottom the conception was rooted in the
archetype of the Dark Lady—dangerous,
strong, erotic, evil—a direct contrast to the
obedient, domestic, chaste, and somewhat
childlike Fair Lady of popular imagery.25
Gender-based perceptions—that female
prisoners were the source of sexual mischief;
that they could not earn as much as men; that
they had gone beyond the pale of redemption—combined with the problem of smaller
numbers to create a situation in which
women’s needs were slighted. The same factors
operated to ensure that, once the double standard of care developed in informal practice, it
continued and, in some institutions, intensified as the years went by.
y
Matrons, Lady Visitors, and
Women’s Prison Reform
Toward the end of the nineteenth century,
women themselves led the movement to establish separate prisons for their sex, and women
directed these institutions as well. To what
degree were women involved in the care and
supervision of female convicts earlier in the
century? The answer to this question helps
complete the picture of treatment of female
prisoners in the early period. In addition, it
indicates the limits on female supervision in
predominantly male institutions, particularly
as a means for promoting change.
By the mid-nineteenth century, a number
of states had hired matrons to supervise their
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
60
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 60
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
female convicts. As the female populations
expanded, need for matrons became ever more
obvious, and one legislature or prison administration after another grudgingly established
the office of matron. Quite early, moreover,
far-sighted penologists began to formulate a
theory about matrons that later played an
important ideological role in women’s prison
reform. According to this theory, matrons were
necessary because female prisoners by nature
needed special treatment that only other
women could provide. This idea appeared, in
embryonic form, in Lieber’s observation of the
early 1830s that
a matron [is] necessary for the special
superintendence of the female prisoners; she is quite indispensable if the
Auburn system is applied to women as
well as men; she alone can enforce the
order of this system, while it is nearly
impossible for male keepers. The
whole spirit of opposition in womankind is raised against him [sic].
Besides, the moral management of
female convicts must differ from that
of male criminals.26
Over the next three decades this belief was
expanded and refined into the notion that
female supervisors were not only necessary but
also possibly reformative agents. Carefully
selected matrons, went the new argument,
could provide role models and thus effect
positive change in their charges. In the late
1860s, Wines and Dwight endorsed an English
authority’s belief that:
It is especially important . . . that
female officers should be distinguished for modesty of demeanor,
and the exercise of domestic virtues,
and that they should possess that
intimate knowledge of household
employment, which will enable them
to teach the ignorant and neglected
female prisoner how to economise her
means, so as to guard her from the
temptations caused by waste and
extravagance.27
Matrons who exhibited characteristics of
middle-class homemakers might inspire female
criminals to become respectable women.
But although these new conceptions and
justifications of the matron’s role were in the
air, they had little effect on practice before
1870. Matrons in the early prisons and penitentiaries seldom performed more than a custodial function. In many institutions, there was
but one matron to supervise the entire female
population. Usually she lived in the institution
(sometimes in the women’s section itself) and
was on duty twenty-four hours a day, six and
one-half days a week. Little biographical information is available on these early matrons, but
they appear often to have been older women,
widowed, forced by economic hardship into
such unpleasant work. In other instances, they
were wives of wardens. In any case, as workingclass women they were unlikely to provide the
middle-class role models that progressive
penologists recommended. Moreover, even if
some early matrons had had the energy for
reform, they had no authority with which to
realize such an ambition. Hired by the warden,
they could also be fired by him if they strayed
too far from prison tradition. Mary Weed, who
ran Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail between
1793 and 1796, was an exception to this rule.
But elsewhere, women involved in prison
administration were subordinate to men.28
Another route through which women
became involved in prison operations before
1870 was lay visiting. Inspired by religious
principles, some women passed through the
dreary gateways of penitentiaries to succor and
uplift female criminals. Most notable among
this group were the lady visitors at
Philadelphia’s Eastern Penitentiary. Eastern was
famous in the United States and Europe for its
system of perpetual solitary confinement.
Inmates were kept in total isolation from one
another on the theory that they would thus
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 61
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
reflect and repent instead of picking up new
criminal habits. Despite the spartan aspects of
their care, Eastern’s prisoners were well supervised, and they were permitted to have selected
visitors. At a time when its female population
numbered as low as twenty, the institution
hired a matron to care for their needs.
Moreover, according to Dorothea Dix,
although they were “chiefly employed in making and repairing apparel,” the women had “full
time for the use of books, and the lessons which
are assigned weekly by the ladies who visit the
prison to give instruction.”29 These visitors
belonged to the Association of Women Friends.
Dix reported that the Quaker women made
visits every Monday afternoon
throughout the year; and you may see
them there seriously and perseveringly
engaged in their merciful vocation.
Their care extends to the convicts after
the expiration of sentences. These
ladies read the scriptures, furnish suitable books for the prisoners, give
instruction in reading, writing, and
arithmetic; and what is of great value,
because reaching them through a
direct influence, instruct them by conversation, suited to their capacity.30
The efforts of the Philadelphian ladies to
comfort and educate female inmates echoed,
if but faintly, events already underway in
England, where about 1815 Elizabeth Fry,
another Quaker, had begun similar work. Such
efforts were soon mirrored in several New York
State developments. At Ossining, New York,
two women took over management of the
Mount Pleasant Female Prison in the mid1840s and introduced some of the techniques
of reform that later became staples of women’s
prison discipline. At almost the same time,
middle-class women in New York City organized a women’s branch of the reformist
Prison Association of New York. Under the
leadership of yet another Quaker, Abigail
Hopper Gibbons, this Female Department of
61
the Prison Association established a halfway
house where discharged female prisoners
could receive shelter, moral training, and help
in finding positions as domestic servants. On
both sides of the Atlantic, these early manifestations of concern by women outside the walls
foreshadowed the tremendously strong current of reform that eventually swept some
women out of men’s prisons entirely and into
female-run institutions of their own.31
But true reform, in the sense of structural
change in the care of prisoners, could not be
accomplished by these lady visitors, high-status
matrons, and prison association members.
Such activists supplemented the matron’s role
and contributed to its redefinition, but at midcentury they did not actually challenge the conditions under which women were confined.
Despite prisons’ growing willingness to employ
matrons and the unquestionably meliorative
efforts by outsiders in Philadelphia, Ossining,
and New York City, profound change in the
condition of female prisoners could not occur
until reformers identified what was later recognized as the source of the problem: the fact that
women were held in institutions designed for
men. Once the problem was defined, the solution seemed obvious—a fourth stage in the
process of separation of female from male prisoners, in which the former would be removed
to prisons of their own.
y
The Mount Pleasant
Female Prison
This fourth stage did not occur until the reformatory movement began in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century, but it was anticipated by
New York’s establishment of the Mount
Pleasant Female Prison at Ossining in 1835. The
founding of Mount Pleasant was a milestone in
the evolution of women’s prisons. This institution was the first women’s prison in the United
States: it was deliberately established by an act
of the legislature, 32 in contrast to other women’s
units of the period, which developed haphazardly
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
62
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 62
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
as appendages to men’s prisons. Although
Mount Pleasant was both geographically close
to and administratively dependent on the Sing
Sing prison for men, it existed apart, with its
own buildings and staff. Moreover, during the
years in which Mount Pleasant was administered by two innovative women, it became the
site for experiments that forecast the great reformatory movement just ahead.
Construction having taken several years,
Mount Pleasant was not ready to receive prisoners until 1839. Even before the prison officially opened, women at Bellevue were
transferred to Sing Sing, so anxious was New
York City to pass them on. They were held in a
cellblock of the men’s institution until the new
prison was ready, at which point they and the
women from Auburn were transferred to
Mount Pleasant. A New York law of 1841
instructed that, thereafter, all women sentenced to a state prison should be sent to the
female department at Sing Sing.33
The women’s prison was situated on the
hill behind Sing Sing, separated from the men’s
quarters by a roadway and overlooking the
Hudson River. According to a description of
the late 1860s, it was “a handsome building . . .
with a Doric portico of imposing proportions.”34 The inside was modeled on the
Auburn plan, with three tiers of twenty-four
cells each. In the west end of the building, from
which the view was best, the matrons had their
quarters. At the east end, within the prison
area, stood an elevated platform used for
chapel services and lectures. Below it was a
nursery. In addition to the main building this
prison included a workshop and two large,
separate cells for punishment, each cell with its
own yard. The men’s section of Sing Sing was
as yet unenclosed, but a high wall was built
around the women’s complex to minimize
communication between the sexes. More cell
space was needed within a few years. The
women’s prison, however, could not easily be
expanded or remodeled. “Poorly designed and
difficult to alter,” W. D. Lewis has observed,
“the Greek temple overlooking the Hudson
was an example of penny-wisdom and poundfoolishness.”35
Ultimate authority for management of
Mount Pleasant lay with the board of inspectors of Sing Sing, but daily administration was
left to a matron to whom was delegated the
same authority over government and discipline as that given the principal keeper of the
men’s section. Several assistant matrons helped
her with these tasks. During most of the years
of its operation, the prison’s matrons were at
best unremarkable, at times disastrous. Two,
however, were outstanding: Eliza Farnham,
who served as chief matron from 1844 to 1847,
and Georgiana Bruce, a former resident of
Brook Farm, the Utopian community, who
assisted Farnham during her first year. Their
experiments with reformational techniques
were the most radical and ambitious efforts of
the time to improve criminals morally.
Georgiana Bruce’s account of the background to Farnham’s appointment gives an
idea of how tumultuous life could be in an
inadequately supervised female department.
[Under the previous matron] there had
been a sort of rebellion among the convicts, or among some of the most daring, who had deliberately refused to
conform to the rules of the prison, or to
perform the duties assigned them. They
tyrannized over and maltreated the
weaker and more docile of their fellows,
and made night hideous by singing
blasphemous and obscene songs.
The matron, a respectable, but
incompetent person, had finally been
attacked and the clothes torn from her
body. A well-meaning, tightskulled
little chaplain had prayed frantically for
the rebels,—prayed to them also. They
made a feint of yielding, then turned
the prison into a pandemonium
again. . . . The Board, on making a visit
to the prison, had been met by shouts
of derision and insolent defiance, and
they had to make a hasty exit to escape
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 63
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
the kids [wooden food tubs] flung at
them by the rioters.
By a most fortunate chance Judge
Edmunds [Edmonds; board member
and prison reformer] heard of Mrs.
Farnham, and one interview with her
convinced him that he had found the
person he was in search of, and she
was shortly engaged as a matron.36
Farnham was only twenty-eight years old
at the time, and Bruce but twenty-five; yet
through a combination of firmness and
kindness, they rapidly reestablished order at
Mount Pleasant. A phrenologist, Farnham
believed that if she could stimulate her charges
with positive influences, their criminal
tendencies would be overcome. To this end she
introduced a program of education, instructing the women each morning on “the
more interesting persons in the history of
our country, in . . . astronomy, in geography,
and also in . . .the elements of physiology
and physical education.” She added novels
such as Oliver Twist to the prison’s library
(which at the time of her arrival consisted
solely of seventy-five copies of Call to the
Unconverted Sinner), and she permitted
inmates to take books to their cells. “The
wayward creatures,” Bruce reported, “found by
degrees that their prison was turned into a
school, and they lost the inclination to make
trouble.” Farnham was a strict disciplinarian,
yet she tried to keep rules to a minimum. She
modified the rule of total silence, permitting
inmates “to talk in a low tone to each other
half an hour every afternoon, providing that
they had conformed to the rule of silence
during the remainder of the day.” In another
departure from contemporary practice, she
and Bruce attempted to alleviate the grimness
of the prison environment by introducing
flowers, music, and visitors from the outside.
Significantly, Bruce referred to the prison as
“our reformatory.”37
Such innovations, though widely
endorsed toward the end of the century,
63
shocked many of Farnham’s contemporaries.
Conservatives such as Sing Sing’s chaplain
considered novel-reading irreligious. Moreover, Farnham’s relaxation of the silent rule
sowed dissension at the neighboring men’s
prison, where the rule still prevailed. Farnham’s
opponents publicly attacked her and her
reforms. She fought back but eventually lost
the struggle, resigning in 1847.
Like most other female convicts of the
mid-nineteenth century, those at Mount
Pleasant worked long hours at tasks considered
appropriate to women—in this case buttonmaking and hat-trimming, as well as sewing
clothes for male prisoners. Other than work,
their program was minimal, consisting in 1841
of only a Sabbath school taught by lady visitors. By 1843 (the chaotic year preceding
Farnham’s appointment), even the Sabbath
school had been discontinued. With Farnham’s
arrival began a brief period of programs.
Convicts continued to work, but Farnham
made time for religious observances and
instruction. This enraged her critics, who
charged that the women’s prison should be
earning higher profits. Farnham retorted that
women in the female prison, like their counterparts outside the wall, were paid much less
than men. But this logic did not appease her
profit-minded opponents.38
Mount Pleasant seems to have been the
first state prison to include a nursery. Babies
could occasionally be found in other nineteenthcentury custodial institutions: in an act of
1843, for example, the Tennessee legislature
instructed the penitentiary to “receive with
Pricilla Childress, a convict from the county of
Giles, her infant child,” and in 1869 New Jersey
officials complained that a black woman who
had been incarcerated for years had recently
given birth to a mulatto child, fathered by a
guard. But only the records of Mount Pleasant
make reference to separate accommodations
for infants. Before special arrangements were
made for the care of newborns, infant mortality rates ran high. According to the Prison
Association of New York, for instance, before
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
64
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 64
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
establishment of the Mount Pleasant nursery,
every child born at Sing Sing had died.
Women’s reformatories that opened in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries usually allowed women to keep their babies, and
because these institutions received mainly
young sex delinquents, their infant populations were often sizeable. Babies posed a
greater problem for custodial prisons that, like
Mount Pleasant, received felons; the serious
offenses and lengthy sentences of female felons
made prison administrators reluctant to admit
infants with their mothers. But Mount
Pleasant, because it held the largest population
of female convicts in the country and because
it was founded explicitly for the care of
women, came to terms with the problem posed
by infants. The presence of a nursery at Mount
Pleasant meant that the difference between the
incarceration experiences of men and women
was greater at Sing Sing than at other penitentiaries. Moreover, women did not automatically lose their babies or have to devise ways to
care for them in single cells. The special needs
of female prisoners were being recognized.39
Disobedient women were punished less
brutally than men at Sing Sing, yet their chastisements were severe. One punishment was
gagging, which Dorothea Dix found “shocking
and extremely objectionable.” Judge Edmonds
reported that at Sing Sing, “The gag has been
sometimes applied, but it has been only among
the females that it has been rendered absolutely
necessary!” On the other hand, he found, “In
the women’s prison, the lash is never used.
There the punishments are confinement to their
own cells in the main dormitory, or in separate
cells, with reduction of food,” and, of course,
gagging.40 Farnham preferred kindness to punishment as a means to achieve order, but even
she could react harshly, meting out long periods
of solitary confinement, cropping women’s hair,
and using the gag and straitjacket. A list of violations and punishments in 1846 included:
—Noise and violence in her room at
noon. Shower bath.41
—Disobedience and noise in her room.
Twelve days in solitary confinement in
outer cell.
—Noise in her room at night. Straight
[sic] jacket for the night, and bread and
water for one week.
—For rushing from her cell when the
door was open . . . and repeating it many
times . . . a chain six feet in length was
made fast to the wall and locked upon
her wrist.42
Administration of corporal punishment had
not yet become a matter about which even
reform-minded authorities felt embarrassment.
Overcrowding at Mount Pleasant—or
rather New York’s refusal to create space for
its growing numbers of female convicts—
eventually led to the institution’s demise. By
1865, with nearly two hundred prisoners,
Mount Pleasant was close to double its capacity. That year the legislature ruled that
women from the seventh and eighth judicial
districts should be sent to local institutions
instead of to the women’s prison. A law of
1877 ordering transfer of all Mount Pleasant’s
inmates to a county penitentiary emptied the
prison entirely. For more than a decade thereafter, New York held its female state prisoners
in local institutions.43
As the phenomenon of Mount Pleasant
demonstrates, the seeds of the women’s reformatory had been sown by mid-century. At
Mount Pleasant, women were confined apart
from men and supervised by other women.
Under Farnham and Bruce, female convicts—
for perhaps the first time—were encouraged by
prison administrators to reform. And the techniques introduced by Farnham—education,
example, sympathy—later became crucial to
the reformatory program. But as Mount
Pleasant also indicates, these seeds could not
survive in the harsh environment of the penitentiary. Education could have little effect in an
institution whose main interest was profits;
role models and sympathetic understanding
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 65
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
were incompatible with straitjackets and bars.
Most importantly, no thoroughgoing change in
the treatment of women could take place until
female prisoners and their matrons were freed
from second-class status in institutions that
insisted on male authority and precedence.
Until about 1870 the custodial institution
was the only type of penal unit for women. It
received its fullest articulation at Mount
Pleasant, but all other female departments
exhibited its traits. The custodial model was a
masculine model: derived from men’s prisons,
it adopted their characteristics—retributive
purpose, high-security architecture, a maledominated authority structure, programs that
stressed earnings, and harsh discipline. In
comparison to women’s reformatories, women’s
custodial institutions treated inmates like
men. But as we have seen, this did not mean
that women’s care and experience of incarceration were identical to those of males.
Probably lonelier and certainly more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, easier to ignore
because so few in number, and viewed with
distaste by prison officials, women in custodial units were treated as the dregs of the state
prisoner population.
y
Notes
1. Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, p. 105. On
the debate about the origins of the penitentiary, see
Michael Ignatieff, “State, Civil Society, and Total
Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of
Punishment,” in Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, eds.,
Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 3
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 153–92.
2. For exceptions to the rule of disregard of
women within penitentiaries, see W. David Lewis, From
Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in
New York, 1796–1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1965); and McKelvey, American Prisons.
3. New York, Auburn State Prison, AR 1832: 17
(emphasis in original).
4. New York, Inspectors of State Prisons, An
Account of the State Prison or Penitentiary House, in the
City of New-York (New York: Isaac Colling and Son,
1801), p. 18 (both quotations).
65
5. For the complaints, see New York Committee
on State Prisons, Report of the Committee on State
Prisons, relative to a prison for female convicts (New
York Sen. Doc. No. 68, 1835), p. 1 (no classification,
“constant . . . intercourse”); New York, Mount
Pleasant State Prison, AR 1835: 5 (food), AR 1836: 5
(need for a matron); New York Committee on State
Prisons, Report of the Committee on State Prisons (New
York Sen. Doc. No. 32, 1833), p. 3 (cholera and ensuing events). New York, Mount Pleasant State Prison,
AR 1836: 5, notes the desire of New York City officials
to rid themselves of the women at Bellevue.
6. Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western
Travel, vol. 1 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838),
pp. 124–25.
7. On the unfortunate pregnancy of Rachel
Welch, see Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora,
pp. 94–95.
8. On the two Ohio state prisons that preceded its
penitentiary, see Clara Belle Hicks, “The History of Penal
Institutions in Ohio to 1850,” Ohio State Archeological and
Historical Society Publications 33 (1924): 359–426; Jacob
H. Studer, Columbus, Ohio: Its History, Resources, and
Progress (Columbus: n.p., 1873); and George H. Twiss, ed.,
“Journal of Cyrus P. Bradley,” Ohio Archeological and
Historical Publications 15 (1906): 240–42.
According to Orlando F. Lewis, The Development
of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776–1845
(orig. 1922; repr. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith,
1967), p. 262, Ohio’s prison of 1818 included five
underground, unheated cells, and it was here that the
women were kept. No other historian of the building
refers to women in the underground cells, however,
and according to William Crawford’s plan of the institution (Report on the Penitentiaries of the United States,
[orig. 1835; repr. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith,
1969], Plan 18), its women resided in a small building
inside the yard.
9. Ohio Penitentiary, AR 1850: 133.
10. Gerrish Barrett as quoted by Lewis,
Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs,
p. 263; D. L. Dix, Remarks on Prisons and Prison
Discipline in the United States, 2d ed. (orig. 1845; repr.
Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1967), p. 48; Sarah
Maria Victor, The Life Story of Sarah M. Victor for Sixty
Years. Convicted of Murdering Her Brother, Sentenced to
be Hung, Had Sentence Commuted, Passed Nineteen
Years in Prison, Yet is Innocent (Cleveland: Williams
Publishing Co., 1887), p. 317.
11. Dan J. Morgan, Historical Lights and Shadows
of the Ohio State Penitentiary and Horrors of the Death
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
66
9/5/2008
4:18 PM
Page 66
CORRECTIONS: A TEXT/READER
Trap (Columbus: Champlin Printing Company, 1895),
p. 91; Victor, The Life Story, pp. 298, 326, 327; Ohio
Penitentiary, AR 1880: 91. The humming-bird is
described in Victor, The Life Story, pp. 324–35.
12. Tennessee State Penitentiary, BR 1859: 232.
On the Tennessee penitentiary in the early and midnineteenth century, see Jesse Crawford Crowe, “The
Origin and Development of Tennessee’s Prison
Problem, 1831–1871,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly
15 (2) (June 1956): 111–35; and E. Bruce Thompson,
“Reforms in the Penal System of Tennessee, 1820–
1850,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 1 (4) (December
1942): 291–308.
13. Tennessee State Archives, Convict Record
Book 1831–1874, Record Group 25, Ser. 12, v. 86;
Messages of Governor James K. Polk, Tennessee
General Assembly, House Journal, 24th Assembly, 1st
sess., 1841–1842: 23, as quoted in Crowe, “Origin and
Development of Tennessee’s Prison Problem,” p. 117.
14. For a hint of forced prostitution at the
Tennessee penitentiary late in the century, see
Tennessee, Acts and Resolutions 1897, Ch. 125, sec. 28,
making it a misdemeanor for any prison officer “to
hire or let any female convict to any person on the outside as cook, washerwoman, or for any other purpose.”
15. Montana and Utah. Utah opened two workrelease facilities for women in the late 1970s but apparently continued to send women to the state prison until
near the end of their terms. See American Correctional
Association, Directory 1980 (College Park, Md.:
American Correctional Association, 1980), pp. 139, 233.
Cf. Joan Potter, “In Prison, Women are Different,”
Corrections Magazine (December 1978): 15 (“Montana’s
12 women are divided between a separate Life Skills
Center in Billings and a coed facility in Missoula”).
16. Francis Lieber, “Translator’s Preface” to
Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, On
the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its
Application in France (orig. 1833; repr. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), p. 8.
17. Crawford, Report on the Penitentiaries,
Appendix; Dix, Remarks on Prisons, pp. 107–8.
18. Beaumont and Tocqueville, On the
Penitentiary System in the United States, p. 72.
19. Lieber, “Translator’s Preface,” p. 8.
20. Ibid., p. 12.
21. Crawford, Report on the Penitentiaries, pp. 26–27.
22. New York, Mount Pleasant State Prison, AR
1841: 28 (emphasis as in original). For reviews of the
literature on current patterns of female crime, current
explanations of female crime patterns, and the evidence for and against judicial chivalry, see Nicolette
Parisi, “Exploring Female Crime Patterns: Problems
and Prospects” and “Are Females Treated Differently?
A Review of the Theories and Evidence on Sentencing
and Parole Decisions,” both in Nicole Hahn Rafter and
Elizabeth A. Stanko, eds., Judge, Lawyer, Victim, Thief:
Women, Gender Roles, and Criminal Justice (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1982).
23. W. A. Coffey, Inside Out, or an Interior View of
the New-York State Prison (New York, 1823), p. 61, as
quoted in Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora, p. 38;
E. C. Wines and Theodore W. Dwight, Report on the
Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and
Canada (Albany: van Benthuysen & Sons, 1867), p. 71.
24. Dix, Remarks on Prisons, p. 108; Crawford,
Report on the Penitentiaries, Appendix, p. 68.
25. Lieber, “Translator’s Preface,” pp. 9–11; Mary
Carpenter, Our Convicts, vol. 1 (orig. 1864; repr.
Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969), p. 207; Caesar
Lombroso and William Ferrero, The Female Offender
(first English ed. 1895; repr. New York: D. Appleton &
Company, 1915). On the troublesome women in Ohio,
see note 10 and accompanying text. On the archetype of
the Dark Lady and its influence, see Paula Blanchard,
Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalism to Revolution
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1978), pp. 193–94; and Rafter
and Stanko, Judge, Lawyer, Victim, Thief, pp. 2–7 and
chapter 11. Lewis’s “The Ordeal of the Unredeemables”
(From Newgate to Dannemora, chapter 7) also deals with
nineteenth-century conceptions of female criminals and
their effects upon prison treatment.
26. Lieber, “Translator’s Preface,” p. 13.
27. Wines and Dwight, Report on the Prisons,
pp. 123–24.
28. On Mary Weed, see Negley K. Teeters, The
Cradle of the Penitentiary: The Walnut Street Jail at
Philadelphia, 1773–1835 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
Prison Society, 1955), pp. 47, 61.
29. Dix, Remarks on Prisons, p. 107.
30. Ibid., pp. 62–63. For background on the
Association of Women Friends, see Teeters, Cradle of
the Penitentiary, p. 107.
31. See Elizabeth Fry, Memoir of the Life of
Elizabeth Fry with Extracts from her Journal and Letters,
two volumes edited by two of her daughters
(Philadelphia: J. W. Moore, 1847); and, for a discussion
of the Female Department of the Prison Association
of New York, see Freedman, Their Sisters’ Keepers,
pp. 28–35.
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:51 PM
Page 67
Section 1 “Much and Unfortunately Neglected”
32. New York, Laws of 1835, Ch. 104.
33. New York, Laws of 1841, Ch. 200, sec. 3.
34. Wines and Dwight, Report on the Prisons,
p. 107.
35. Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora, p. 177.
36. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, Years of Experience:
An Autobiographical Narrative (orig. 1887; repr. New
York: AMS Press, 1971), pp. 190–91.
37. New York, Mount Pleasant State Prison, AR
of the Inspectors 1846 (New York Sen. Doc. No. 16,
1846): Appendix D, p. 94 (first quotation); Kirby, Years
of Experience, pp. 193, 199, 218.
38. New York, Mount Pleasant State Prison, AR of
the Inspectors 1846: Appendix D, p. 88 (Farnham’s retort).
39. Tennessee, Acts of the General Assembly 1843–
44, Resolution No. 16; New Jersey, Report of the
Commissioners to Examine the Various Systems of
67
Prison Discipline and Propose an Improved Plan
(Trenton: The True American Office, 1869), p. 5;
Prison Association of New York, AR 1846: 48.
40. Dix, Remarks on Prisons, pp. 13–14 (includes
the Edmonds report; emphasis as in original).
41. Despite its mild name, the shower bath was
one of the prison’s cruelest punishments. The prisoner
was bombarded by a powerful stream of water until
close to drowning.
42. New York, Mount Pleasant State Prison,
Report of the Inspectors of the Mount Pleasant State
Prison in answer to a resolution of the Assembly (New
York Ass. Doc. No. 139, 1846), Appendix C, pp. 113–14.
43. Clifford M. Young, Women’s Prisons Past and
Present and Other New York State Prison History (Elmira
Reformatory: The Summary Press, 1932), p. 13 (ruling
of 1865); New York, Laws of 1877, Ch. 172, secs. 1 and 2.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Relate how race, class, and gender have affected the operation of correctional institutions in the past.
Can you think of how they might influence correctional operation these days?
2. How did prison conditions for women vary by state in the 1800s? How were they similar? How did they
differ from the conditions experienced by male prisoners?
3. Why were women inmates treated differently from male inmates during this period? How has this changed?
❖
01-Stohr-45763:01-Stohr-45763
9/5/2008
4:52 PM
Page 68